Project EmpatIA Starts: 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'.
Snap-shot
Project EmpatIA addresses the lack of access to proper healthcare in remote areas in Peru.
Adapted from the Azor DriftCam, the deep sea rig uses cameras, lasers, and lights to record the seabed floor
Due to deep-rooted centralisation, many Peruvians in regions outside Lima face major challenges in the access to healthcare, mainly related to the lack of necessary infrastructure and equipment.
Our pilot seeks to address this problem by establishing a strategic partnership with the National Social Insurance (EsSalud), and its National Centre of Telemedicine.
Detail
The gap in the access to healthcare for people in remote areas has deep negative effects on the economic, social and cultural realms. The cases of patients being forced to travel for hours to another city to receive treatment or monitoring, due to a lack of infrastructure, equipment, or medical staff, illustrate only a small example of the adversity these populations face. Our project aims to, ultimately, reduce this gap. While this is a highly complex challenge, we believe an important advance can be achieved through a strategic approach, articulation and partnerships with key healthcare actors, and strong evidence of the benefits of using digital health and telemedicine technologies for these populations.
Our proposal aims to engage with EsSalud, one of the most important Peruvian healthcare institutions, and its National Centre of Telemedicine, our pilot can promote the effective introduction of AI (AVATR software), and other digital health devices into the mainstream healthcare services, having a direct positive impact on patients in remote areas. Furthermore, our geographic approach and the specific medical conditions we would target, with an important focus on chronic diseases (around 12 million Peruvians suffer from a chronic disease, around 37% of the national population) ensure that our pilot addresses a highly vulnerable group, as recently shown by the correlation between Covid-19-related deaths in Peru and patients with chronic comorbidities.
Diabetes represents a particular public health challenge — it is associated with co-morbidities, healthcare costs and early death. For this reason, diabetes management is the key focus of Project EmpathIA.
EmpatIA User Experience
Our Plan
The pilot will be divided in three key phases, with specific objectives, duration, and activities:
Preparation (4 months: Nov22-Feb23) — This includes the development of technical and functional specifications, the information governance & ethics approvals with our partners, the recruitment of patients for the pilot, and the tailored design of the software by Inavya, alongside the patients and EsSalud’s medical experts. The design point is vital for the pilot, as it will define the key medical areas to address, and the approach the pilot will have with the patients. This phase of the project mainly targets our questions to local regulation and public healthcare capacities, in close coordination with EsSalud.
Execution (6 months: Mar23-Aug23) — Including the use of Avatr by 90 patients, divided into three EsSalud hospitals, strategically selected in the cities of Piura (in the north), Huánuco (Centre) and Arequipa (South). This phase is strongly related to our three main learning questions, especially on enhanced access to healthcare.
Evaluation (2 months: Sept23-Oct23) — Including the analysis of the results, the presentation of a final report basing on the key questions and gathered evidence, and awareness activities alongside key partners in academia and the public sector. As in the Execution phase, the evaluation will address the three learning questions, and in this case, it will provide solid, measurable evidence, through our final report.
How’s it Going So far?
Our first Sprint focused on testing a sample of Avatr technology text threads to see if they can be translated to Spanish that is accessible to people from Peru. We tested 10% of clinical and patient texts using various translation platforms. Results from our testing is that DeepL works better, so we will use DeepL going forward.
During our first Sprint we also sought to explore how best to take Project EmpatIA forward from a clinical and management perspective. This included having meetings with key stakeholders across Peru.
A recent factor that we have had to adapt to has been the recent political activity in Peru. The EmpatIA team has engaged proactively with all key stakeholders to find the optimal path forward, which has resulted in the establishment of further partnership discussions to include key private actors and academic institution participation. In addition, the project team has explored engagement with healthcare providers in Brazil and Mexico, through discussions with British Embassy officials. Overall, these discussions have proven to be very helpful, enabling plans to develop paths-to-market earlier than anticipated for the project.
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 Peru’s Health Ecosystem and the pilot’s next planned steps — “Project EmpatIA: Innovating within the Peru Ecosystem”
