PAHO platform brings health monitoring of chronic diseases to remote populations

By Sherrica Thompson

Staff Writer

January 23, 2023 – Over 71 percent of all deaths globally are said to be caused by non-communicable diseases (NCDs). In the Americas, 5.5 million deaths are due to NCDs, such as cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic lung disease.

As a result, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said it developed a digital platform to bring telehealth services to remote populations in Latin American and Caribbean countries. This, the organization said, will make telemedicine the “new normal” for healthcare workers and patients managing chronic diseases.

The All-in-ONE Telehealth platform, which PAHO said is based on Open-Source technology, was developed in 2022 with financial contribution from the United States Government and has initially been piloted in Trinidad and Tobago.

“The aim of the platform is to improve patient outreach and follow-up, with an emphasis on continuity of care for people with non-communicable diseases (NCDs),” the Director of the Department of Evidence and Intelligence for Action in Health at PAHO Sebastian Garcia Saiso said.

Based on information from the PAHO, the digital platform will be able to carry out several critical health functions. These include:

• Assist diabetic or hypertensive patients in managing and monitoring their disease;
• Allow health workers at remote points to create an “advance triage” to refer patients before they undertake the necessary travel to a health centre;
• Integrate applications such as instant messaging, conversational bots (chat bots), patient medical records and digital prescriptions;
• As well as send an alert when a patient’s test results are outside a normal range;

PAHO said its goal in increasing universal access to healthcare is to make the platform available as a public good so that all countries in the region can benefit from it.

A rollout of the All-in-One platform is planned for this year in several countries, such as The Bahamas, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Suriname, Dominica, Uruguay, Panama, and Nicaragua.