An Experiment to Analyze Performance of Virtual Private Network Approach to Information Exchange between Health Facilities

Authors

  • Siphael BETUEL The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology
  • Dina MACHUVE The Nelson Mandela Institution of Science and Technology
  • Khamis KALEGELE Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology

Keywords:

Health Information Exchange, Virtual Private Network (VPN), Care2x, IPsec

Abstract

In developing countries, Tanzania in particular, studies and reports have depicted that there is a strong desire and need for seamless information exchange across health care providing facilities.  A limited study conducted in few public and private hospitals has also revealed the same. On the other hand, the eHealth community has failed to effectively take advantage of the advances in technologies to make that desire come true. One potential technology is Virtual Private Network (VPN) for which it has been noticed that there is a misconception and lack of innovative initiatives that slow down its uptake in eHealth. This article presents a technical assessment of the VPN technology in Tanzanian context. Primarily, the assessment focused on practicability of the best VPN practices and the perceived user experience performance when VPN is in use. It was observed that the response time dropped significantly as expected. The increase in response time and computer memory utilization is due to security mechanisms that are involved in VPN, the stronger security is used the more performance decreases. However, the increase in response time and computer memory utilization is very small in such a way that users will not be able to notice.

Author Biographies

Siphael BETUEL, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology

Information Technology System Development and Management (ITSDM)

Dina MACHUVE, The Nelson Mandela Institution of Science and Technology

Information Technology System Development and Management (ITSDM)

Khamis KALEGELE, Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology

Research Projects and Publications

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Published

27.07.2017

How to Cite

1.
BETUEL S, MACHUVE D, KALEGELE K. An Experiment to Analyze Performance of Virtual Private Network Approach to Information Exchange between Health Facilities. Appl Med Inform [Internet]. 2017 Jul. 27 [cited 2024 Mar. 28];39(1-2):21-9. Available from: https://ami.info.umfcluj.ro/index.php/AMI/article/view/620

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Articles