Dr. Harvey White, special assistant to the President and director for the Center for Healthy Communities, recently delivered a speech about the University of South Alabama’s telemedicine program at the National Academy of Public Administrations Information Technology and Governance conference in Ghana, Africa.

The two-day event was attended by representatives from across Ghana. White’s talk focused on “E-Governance: Its Promise and Limitations in Public Management.”

He used examples from USA’s experience with telemedicine and connections in rural Alabama to show how the Ghanaians might harness similar technology in their country.

“Rural Alabama is a developing state, a remote area, and this is like much of Africa – very remote,” White said. “We already have a model here about how technology can be used to help a society. I believe it’s applicable to other countries as well.”

White also encouraged the attendees to focus on what they wanted from governance before moving on to electronic governance.

“Too frequently we put technology in front of something before we decide what we are trying to achieve,” he said. “Information technology can be used for oppression,” White said. “We want to make sure it’s not misused, but used for the empowerment of the people.”

Carl Taylor, an assistant dean in the College of Medicine and director of the Emerging Health Technologies, said that the USA program has offered rural Alabama doctors a chance to videoconference with specialists and transfer weekend emergency room visits to doctors at USA Medical Center. He said the same concept could easily be applied to Ghana, where USA staff could teach and train the next generation of health care workers.

“Through video conferencing, we’ve overcome barriers of distance and education and economics as well,” Taylor said. “Distance is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether you’re capturing and sending images across Mobile Bay or across the Atlantic Ocean.”