Project Asklepios

According to the World Health Organization, more than half of the world population lives in remote rural areas. However, a larger share of the medical workforce is devoted to urban areas. A shortage of health professionals in remote and vulnerable areas is an important obstacle to universal access to health in several countries, especially in underdeveloped ones. Therefore, solutions such as telehealth are capable of helping overcome medical shortages in vulnerable areas, for example, through consultations mediated by technology (teleconsultations). However, this instrument requires high infrastructure, in general, unconditional to the reality of the interior regions of emerging or peripheral countries. Therefore, the Asklepios Project proposes an Artificial Intelligence (AI) capable of, through pre-applied questions, identifying infectious diseases based on described symptoms in the scenarios of partial or total failure on the Internet.

  In Brazil, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the University of São Paulo (USP) in conjunction with competent bodies, 39 Brazilian cities with more than 500 thousand inhabitants, concentrated 60% of doctors, while 40% are distributed throughout the country to serve the entire population. In the world, according to the World Health Organization, it is estimated that 50% of the world population lives in remote rural areas. However, they are served with only 25% of the medical workforce. Thus, several countries have solutions to expand the coverage of primary care in vulnerable areas, with telehealth being one of them. It can be characterized by when a patient and a healthcare professional have a relationship mediated by technology. Due to medical scarcity, it is applied in remote areas, making it possible to carry out independent consultations even with doctors and patients at great distance. However, the full exercise of telemedicine implies increased costs in addition to the construction and maintenance of hospitals.

It is a platform which, through the description of the symptoms presented, the analysis of the history, the region where the patient resides and other characteristics attributed to his profile, identifies the possible infectious disease that affects him. Being an Artificial Intelligence, it is based on the concept of Machine Learning, a mathematical model based on a sample of data, which allows making predictions or decisions without having been directly programmed to exercise them.

In scenarios of partial or total internet connection failure, the program uses data stored. However, it has limitations.

It consists of three interfaces:

• Registration or login: Where the health professional insert data which prove that he or she is a doctor, nurse or nursing technician so that he can proceed with the diagnosis.

• Registration and / or consultation of the patient's profile: The patient's profile would consist of postal code, name and surname, date of birth, weight, chronic diseases and history of illnesses.

• Description of the symptom chart: In conjunction with the other data provided, it would be essential to have a detailed description of the symptom chart by answering the questions pre-defined by the platform for its full functioning.

Since the departure of Cuba from Programa Mais Médicos para o Brasil (More Physicians Program), communities in the inlands are suffering with the shortage of health professionals, product of the unequal distribution of them. Currently, the existing solutions  are hospital ships, often composed of resident physicians, and telehealth, less common. Riverside people and indigenous communities are the most affected. They are affected mostly by tropical diseases such as Chagas disease, Dengue fever, Malaria and Leishmaniasis. 

As a way of comprehending the several problems that impact these regions, the residents registration requests their postal codes. Thus, is possible to know the more frequent diseases in certain areas and understand if there are focuses of the vector in the region. In that way, preventive measures can be projected to obtain best quality of life for the people of the community.

For the early control of a certain infectious disease, it is necessary to know where its outbreaks are, which is impossible in scenarios of scarcity of health professionals. Through the platform it is possible to identify where cases arise more frequently and thus design policies to contain the number of cases in places where the victims of medical scarcity are, in addition to assisting in primary care. We do believe this pitch matches the challenge perfectly, since there’s nothing more up to date them the debate of how everyone should have access to healthcare, a basic human right.

When applied, telemedicine needs a huge infrastructure, which has top computers, state-of-art devices, trained professionals, fastest internet etc. Thus, the technology does not match the reality of the places that need it most. Therefore, it is monopolized by large private hospital networks, which often do not operate in rural areas. Differently, the Project Asklepios  has a lower cost solution than the current one, which only requires professionals with affinity to the platform and a device with regular performance, not having total dependence on the internet. In this way, it can be applied as a tool to telemedicine in places where there is a lack of resources.

In the school environment, was developed the concept which Project Asklepios is based. In this way, the initiative has the support of the Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem da Indústria (SENAI), a Brazilian education institute. The institution provides technical support, used to promote the organization and develop the prototype, in addition to providing us with a theoretical basis, which allowed us to idealize the project.

The self-sustainability takes place through the sale of a license, which can be renewed each year. Thus, the impact business would be independent of actions such as philanthropy or similar initiatives. Therefore, all profits derived of the commerce of its services would be reinvested in the organization, making clear its position regarding not considering healthcare as a commodity, so any other alternative to non-reinvestment would be immoral.