Project EmpatIA: Engaging with Healthcare Providers & Patients in Peru
A blog by Alexis de Brouchoven, a Frontier Tech Hub Coach.
Explore learnings from our pilot, ‘EmpatIA — AI to enhance healthcare in remote areas of Peru'.
Engaging Healthcare Providers in Peru
Understanding patient and clinician needs in Peru is essential prior to implementing Avatr in Project EmpatIA. Once understood, delivering the digital health service will enable patients who have difficulty accessing traditional healthcare to gain access, which would result in improved clinical, economic and quality-of-life benefits for the patient and healthcare provider. Clinical teams are also expected to benefit with time savings of up to 20%, as the Avatr system automates many routine activities, such as telephone follow-ups with the patients to check on medication adherence.
Clinicians in Lima are well positioned to identify the main causes of non-adherence to Care Plans, providing rich and descriptive insight into social, economic, behavioural and medical factors.
With support from UKaid, the EmpatIA team recently met with clinicians at Detecta Clinic in Lima. The clinicians described how digital health outpatient services could help reduce the factors which limit Care Plan adherence. For example, 70% of patients under treatment for cervical cancer do not live in Lima, making access to Detecta Clinic difficult due to the cost and time of travelling long distances.
AVATR Demonstration
During the meetings, demonstrations of the Avatr system were provided, followed by detailed discussions. The presentation was led remotely by Dr Peter Sahota from the Inavya team, with Project EmpatIA and Detecta clinical teams all attending, as demonstrated in the photo, below.
During his demonstration, Peter provided an overview of the main features and benefits of the Avatr toolset:
REGISTRATION: Clinicians are able to register each patient to the Avatr system. The registration includes the patient’s name and contact details. Additional information, such as healthcare history, can also be added and displayed on the ‘Doctor Dashboard’. From the patient side, they are able to set login information and update contact details as well as sharing of an emergency contact.
SETTING CARE PLAN: Clinicians were also shown how to input the care plan into Avatr. This included confirmation of the diagnosis and the treatment plan which covers medications, nutrition, and exercise requirements to provide readings when at home, and date for next clinical visit. As Detecta Clinic has a particular focus on cancer, the overview that Peter provided used cancer as the clinical area of concern. During the presentation, Inavya explained how Artificial Intelligence is built into the design of the Avatr system.
When using the Avatr system, a doctor sets a care plan for their patient. The care plan typically includes a prescription for medicine, as well as diet and exercise instructions. The Avatr system converts the doctor's care plan to a unique algorithm, which drives the Avatr chat interaction on the patient's mobile phone. The Avatr system manages most routine activities for the doctor (e.g. follow-up phone calls) saving time, and the system is under the control of the doctor. If the Avatr system detects that a patient needs support, then the doctor is notified automatically. All interactions between the patient and the clinician are recorded on a ledger.
PATIENT ENGAGEMENT: Once the Care Plan is set by a clinician the Avatr system understands what the needs are for the patient. Avatr then starts to interact with the patient, with the aim to support their adherence to the prescribed Care Plan. The interaction with doctors can be via voice or text and can be in English or Spanish. Patients are also able to personalise the settings for their engagement to include recommendations for restaurants and physical activities matched to the care plan and calculators for salt consumption and food and drink affinities.
PATIENT MONITORING: Information provided by the patient is ingested by the Avatr system, with most routine patient interaction automated. If the patient starts to have a decline in their health, the Avatr system will inform the clinician so that they can review the data and make an informed decision, such as adjusting medication levels. Remote monitoring allows clinicians to review relevant readings, create event timelines and trend the data for individual patients as shown below.
All interactions between the patient and clinician, and by the Avatr system, are recorded on a ledger. Patient reports can be customised and shared as needed by the clinician. Clinicians can also review the management dashboard which allows them to review data from all of their patients as shown below. It also allows clinicians to analyse the data to gain additional insights and to gain access to knowledge bases.
DETECTA CLINIC: CANCER OUTPATIENTS
Following the Avatr demonstration, the Detecta clinical team and the EmpatIA team explored potential use cases for a demonstration study at Detecta Clinic. Cervical and breast cancer outpatients were identified as potential clear beneficiaries of Project EmpatIA, as the majority of patients live outside of Lima and have access challenges due to significant travel time, cost and distance. These patients also often require ongoing support to manage side-effects and pain when at home.
Helpful Suggestions from Detecta Clinicians
Adapt Avatr technology to include content that would be of interest and helpful to patients in Peru, including the use of Peruvian music, meditation, exercise, and food choices.
Provide educational videos from the hospital and in Spanish, as many patients prefer to watch videos than to read brochures.
Support technology diffusion across the Peru ecosystem, starting with the private hospitals serving as reference sites to encourage take-up across the public sector, as doctors work across both sectors and are well-positioned to serve as change-agents.
Engage with the British Embassy, which is able to host an event for key stakeholders across the Peru healthcare ecosystem to learn about Project EmpatIA results and to explore next steps for wider take-up and diffusion of the Avatr technology.
The above suggestions inform Sprint 5, which has a clear focus on technical development. During the meeting the EmpatIA and Detecta teams also outlined and agreed practical implementation activities that will need to be addressed in Sprint 5, including the creation of the EmpatIA project plan for a clinical study, technical developments, knowledge transfer, and engagement with the wider health ecosystem in Peru.
If you’d like to dig in further…
📚 Read about the pilot’s first Sprint and their three key phases — “Project EmpatIA Starts”
📚 Learn about the pilot’s local impact and global reach — “Project EmpatIA: Local Impact, Global Reach”
📚 Explore learnings from the pilot’s third Sprint — “Project EmpatIA: Innovating within the Peru Ecosystem”
