PROJECT 2023 - LONG CORONA OUTCOME METRICS REGISTRY

PRESS RELEASE for the Digital Health Camp of the IMPA

 

 

Independent Medical Practitioners' Association of Sri Lanka (IMPA) is the oldest of all the medical societies in Sri Lanka whose membership comprises only of doctors serving full time in the private sector of the health care delivery. While the entire country is now in the grips of the SARS-COV-2 virus we planned to contribute our might to the ongoing efforts of all the CORONA WORKS in the country

 

Our contribution is going to be a unique attempt on several key aspects. We will focus on what is now called LONG CORONA.  The details of this will follow. We will also focus on the scale and scope of the problem by way of providing a solution based on  Information and Communication Technology (ICT). We will also focus on a long term solution for the problem of the LONG CORONA rather than a one off telephone call. We will also focus on a solution where the engagement of the person and the patient contacting us is more than what is available currently. We will also focus on the empowerment of the persons and the patient contacting us again definitely much more than what is currently provided.  Finally we will focus on documentation of what we are doing so that we will know what we are doing and where we are going and whether we have come to where we wanted to come. Documentation is also of fundamental importance to achieve our project objectives which are mentioned below.

 

LONG CORONA is simply a state of continuing symptoms and the illness despite being declared by the doctors as fit to be discharged from hospitals. As of current statistics in the public domain in Sri Lanka 600,000 patients with COVID-19 had been discharged from the hospitals. According to the statistics from the WHO and CDC of the US somewhere around 30% of these patients might still be suffering from COVID-19 illness and its repercussions. So we expect on a gross underestimate that in Sri Lanka there may be now about 200,000 or more of LONG CORONA patients.  Our focus is entirely on these patients who have fallen out of the focus for the time being.

Scale of the problem by numbers is large and it is increasing by day. The scope of the problem at the current time is narrow if we were to go by the past.  Complications following any acute infection and any infection and finally viral infections are well known in Medicine. So doctors are more at ease when compared with the acute COVID-19. Yet because of the many unknown factors related to the SARS-COV-2 virus and particularly of the ability to produce variants much more remains to be discovered and explained. So we are safe to assume the scope is unknown still.

This brings us to the question of a solution based on ICT.  There are many reasons why we can reasonably be interested in a ICT based solution. First the entire healthcare force is focused on ACUTE CORONA - which is the priority no doubt. Second is the scarce human resources in health in Sri Lanka - there is no way one can expect them to focus on a menace in the future.  Third the ICT is providing many solutions which can be harnessed to the benefit of the persons and patients - these will be obvious once the details of our project is revealed.  Fourth the principles of primary care medicine which can veritably be identified as PANCHKARMA of allopathic Medicine -

Comprehensive care, Continuity of care, Coordination of care, Personalized care and the Shared care can be honored and upheld easily in many ICT solutions.

 

All what is explained above will readily be understood once the project is explained and better still once it is in operations and the patients are benefitting which is our ultimate aim.

 

First and foremost this project will be known as Long Corona Outcome Morbidity Registry project or LCOM-R. The services provided to all the persons and patients will be free of charge and it will remain free of charge as long as the problem lasts. IMPA expects the media colleagues to give us wide coverage for this LCOM-R project as our solutions are trilingual and nobody will get deprived or disconnected because of language.  In addition the project is implemented as a series of web applications thus nobody will get disconnected because of geographical boundaries. Also there is a voluntary pool of physicians from the IMPA membership of nearly 500 with specialist  physicians and public health experts. Thus there is no disconnection  on grounds of computer or digital literacy as we are in fact more versatile with manual methods of seeing patients.

 

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE LCOM - RPROJECCT

1. Identify and list all those suffering from LONG CORONA in Sri Lanka

2. Help those patients to manage their illness by way of more and better engagement in the therapeutic process

3. Empowerment of those who are suffering from LONG CORONA

4. Help their primary care physicians or any personal physician to manage these patients well by way of supplying almost all data required through the use of ICT – to this end LCOM has automated the medical data collection

5. To give access to a series of illness and wellness programs to those identified as having LONG CORONA

6. All of the above services to be provided free of charge

 

The project flow from the point of view of LONG CORONA patient is as follows :

Patient sees, hears or learns  about the project in media.  The URL or the internet address of the LCOM-R project is widely publicized and the patient accesses our services through this. The project is optimized to be accessed through any device and particularly from any basic smartphone. LCOM-R project is deploying a Chatbot called DOCTALK for the following processes in sequence - taking consent, registration, clinical assessments and counseling. At any of these steps IMPA trilingual membership is ever ready to go manual and help the persons and patients. As we value documentation everything will be documented be it manual or pixels. 

 

The principal coordinator of the Project is Dr Ananda Perera (0764641031) IMPA president, project secretariat location 275/75, Prof Stanley Wijesundara Mawatha, Colombo 7, telephone : 0112 501 113, Administrative Service Personnel Dr Hazari (0772 364 424), Ms Champa Nishanthi (0771 674 913) and the voluntary pool of members of the IMPA.

 

THE DOCTALK TECHNOLOGY

DOCTALK is the brand under which the BIOSOFT creates, designs, develops and deploys  the medical AI powered chatbots. Chatbot at its simplest is just a small software program.  The purpose of a chatbot is to replicate a human conversation. The human conversation will be conducted either as written language or spoken language. The former is a text chatbot and the other  a voice chatbot. Based on the type of programming used in the development process a chatbot can also be either simple chatbot or a Artificial Intelligent (AI) chatbot which sometimes is also called an Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPAs). Biosoft creates all types of chatbots based on these programming methods.

 

The DOCTALK chatbots used in Long Corona Morbidity Registry (LCOM-R) project are many and varied as some of these are AI powered IPAs. LCOM-R DOCTALK chatbots replicate a conversation between a doctor and the patient. The process of extracting the common denominators of all doctor patient interactions was difficult, tedious and non-trivial. It was certainly based  on the vast clinical experience of the several medical consultants who are supporting the BIOSOFT and DOCTALK.  The chief medical consultant of BIOSOFT had an active clinical work  experience for nearly 30 years. And of course this BIOSOFT expertise pool was also enhanced and enriched by the massive expertise pool of Independent Medical Practitioners' Association (IMPA) of Sri Lanka in no small measure in the process of creation of LCOM-R project based on DOCTALK chatbots.

The LCOM-R project will proceed in a series of steps which are summarized below. First IMPA will attempt to create awareness about the LCOM-R project among the doctors and the general public. This will be supported by the IMPA membership which comprises a massive pool of varied clinical expertise, public health expertise and Information and Communication Technology expertise. In addition we plan to solicit the support of the Sri Lankan Medical Association, Government Medical Officers Association and many other medical professional specialists associations in Sri Lanka. But we will be anticipating a very big support from the media personnel in Sri Lanka electronic as well as print media.

Once a person (healthy fully functional adult in the community) or a patient identifies the self as having or having had LONG CORONA the following url will give access to all the  resources of the LCOM-R project. The project url is :

https://247econsult.net/doctalk

Through this url many AI powered DOCTALK IPAs are sent to you for collection of your personal health information (PHI).  As usual in medicine we will be taking your consent electronically first.  Then there is  an electronic registration process which is followed by a categorization of all those who require the medical services of the IMPA digital health camp (DHC). All these processes are automated and machine based. But the users have the assistance all the way from start to finish through the pool of IMPA volunteer doctors. This assistance is through a mobile service.

Once the patients are identified they will be offered many services of IMPA through this LCOM-R project.  The services available are :

1. Dieting

2. Exercise prescriptions

3. Vaccine prescriptions

4. Symptom checkers

5. Chronic disease management services

6. Care coordination with personal physicians

7. Continuity of care by way providing high quality documentation

8. Live services from the pool of IMPA volunteers

 

Most of these programs are automated and AI powered except the live services from the pool of IMPA volunteers.