GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Fake health news can lead to in­creased stress, mis­in­for­ma­tion and poor health de­ci­sions among em­ploy­ees, im­pact­ing their over­all well­ness.

This, in turn, can lead to ex­or­bi­tant med­ical bills and even un­der­util­i­sa­tion of Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­grammes (EAPs), as em­ploy­ees may not trust or ful­ly un­der­stand the avail­able re­sources, Dr Navi Mu­radali.

In this vein, Pa­tient Con­nect, a lead­ing dig­i­tal health com­pa­ny in the Amer­i­c­as, has launched HealthEd in T&T, an al­liance for dig­i­tal health ed­u­ca­tion and lit­er­a­cy.

The re­cent launch, which took place at The Dalai Lla­ma, One Wood­brook Place, brought to­geth­er a di­verse au­di­ence in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from NGOs, busi­ness, health­care, and tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors.

Mu­radali, the for­mer may­or of San Fer­nan­do, who holds the post of CEO of Pa­tient Con­nect, ex­plained to the Sun­day Busi­ness that HealthEd is the ed­u­ca­tion­al arm of Pa­tient Con­nect.

Pa­tient Con­nect is a dig­i­tal health com­pa­ny serv­ing the Amer­i­c­as pri­mar­i­ly fo­cused on im­prov­ing health lit­er­a­cy and ed­u­ca­tion through re­li­able, ev­i­dence-based dig­i­tal re­sources and ac­cess to care providers and ser­vices.

“Our mis­sion is to pro­vide cul­tur­al­ly ap­pro­pri­ate health in­for­ma­tion specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored for the T&T and Caribbean au­di­ences, help­ing in­di­vid­u­als make in­formed health de­ci­sions,” Mu­radali said.

Pa­tient Con­nect builds AI-as­sist­ed well­ness apps for com­pa­nies and or­gan­i­sa­tions us­ing Om­ni, which is the first AI, trained and de­vel­oped in T&T, to deal with lo­cal health and well­ness in­for­ma­tion and re­sources

How will HealthEd will tack­le fake news?

Mu­radali ex­plained this will be done by pro­vid­ing well-cu­rat­ed, ev­i­dence-based con­tent.

“Our ar­ti­cles will be writ­ten and re­viewed by lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als and vet­ted through rig­or­ous ed­i­to­r­i­al process­es.

“We em­pha­sise trans­paren­cy, cite rep­utable sources, and en­sure that all health claims are backed by clin­i­cal ev­i­dence and FDA ap­provals where ap­plic­a­ble. We have asked the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TMA) and oth­er health-based as­so­ci­a­tions to part­ner with us in this re­gard, Mu­radali said, adding that the time for us to work to­geth­er to ad­dress the mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion af­fect­ing the health and men­tal well-be­ing of our cit­i­zens is now,” he said.

With the so­cial me­dia and AI rev­o­lu­tion, he stressed every one must proac­tive­ly ed­u­cate cit­i­zens on where to get trust­ed, re­li­able and ev­i­dence-based health in­for­ma­tion.

Mu­radali al­so high­light­ed the con­cern­ing trend of pa­tients ar­riv­ing with “Dr Google” di­ag­noses and treat­ments.

“This is­sue can cause un­nec­es­sary anx­i­ety and lead to dan­ger­ous non-ev­i­dence based med­ical treat­ments,” he warned.

He urged the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er health­care bod­ies to dis­sem­i­nate more ev­i­dence-based ar­ti­cles and re­sources to coun­ter­act the ris­ing tide of fake news, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by AI and deep fakes.

Some of the strate­gies he pro­posed were so­cial me­dia videos and posts, work place posters and we­bi­na­rs, and pro­mo­tion­al events to sup­port dig­i­tal health lit­er­a­cy.

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­sources Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) Cavelle Joseph St Omer al­so wad­ed in on how dig­i­tal health ser­vices like well­ness apps can im­prove em­ploy­ee be­hav­iour and ac­cess to men­tal health ser­vices.

She agreed that such apps can pro­vide easy ac­cess to re­li­able men­tal health re­sources, pro­mot­ing proac­tive health man­age­ment.

These, Joseph St Omer added, can help em­ploy­ees track their men­tal health, ac­cess coun­selling ser­vices in re­al-time and re­ceive health ed­u­ca­tion, lead­ing to re­duced ab­sen­teeism and im­proved over­all work­force health. Fur­ther, she not­ed that HRMATT con­tin­ues to col­lab­o­rate with or­gan­i­sa­tions like Pa­tient Con­nect to pos­i­tive­ly con­tribute to in­creas­ing pub­lic aware­ness and bring­ing af­ford­able so­lu­tions to some of T&T’s most press­ing health care chal­lenges ob­served in the work­place.

“From as sim­ple as cre­at­ing niche top­ics such as men­tal health or vac­cines, we can de­vel­op learn­ing sys­tems, learn­ing mod­els, and learn­ing al­go­rithms that can help drown fake news and al­ter­na­tive facts. Through tech­nol­o­gy, we can analyse the in­flu­ence of so­cial me­dia on health mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion and seek to in­ter­vene with the truth,” she said.

Sav­ing mon­ey in a tough econ­o­my

Dr An­drew Dhanoo, pres­i­dent of the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (DATT), shared suc­cess sto­ries of us­ing AI in di­a­betes care.

He men­tioned the use of Con­tin­u­ous Glu­cose Mon­i­tor­ing de­vices for Type 1 di­a­bet­ics and AI-as­sist­ed eye-screen­ing de­vices, which have sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved pa­tient out­comes.

Dhanoo al­so cit­ed ex­am­ples of di­a­bet­ic pa­tients us­ing var­i­ous ‘bush med­i­cines’ with poor re­sults ul­ti­mate­ly lead­ing them to seek care at the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Mean­while, Keino Cox, act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er of in­no­va­tion at TSTT, high­light­ed the com­pa­ny’s ef­forts to im­prove ac­cess to re­li­able health in­for­ma­tion for its mo­bile users.

“We are al­ways look­ing to in­no­vate at bmo­bile, and shar­ing trust­ed health in­for­ma­tion is one way we can ben­e­fit our users,” he stat­ed.

Ava Ram­per­sad, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (FPATT) al­so un­der­scored the need for dig­i­tal health lit­er­a­cy, es­pe­cial­ly for old­er in­di­vid­u­als.

She stressed that dig­i­tal health tools should sup­port in-per­son care, not re­place the es­sen­tial hu­man touch in health­care.

Ram­per­sad al­so called on dig­i­tal health providers to cater to se­nior cit­i­zens and those with spe­cial needs, not­ing that dig­i­tal health ser­vices like well­ness apps can al­so im­prove em­ploy­ee be­hav­iour and ac­cess to men­tal health ser­vices.

HealthEd al­so plans to ed­u­cate the com­mu­ni­ty and im­prove health lit­er­a­cy.

Dhanoo said there are plans to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion posters at part­ner busi­ness lo­ca­tions, such as cred­it unions and tele­com com­pa­nies to reach a wider au­di­ence, ad­vis­ing that this mul­ti-faceted ap­proach en­sures com­pre­hen­sive health ed­u­ca­tion and lit­er­a­cy.

Re­gard­ing the tar­get au­di­ence, Mu­radali said Pa­tient Con­nect works with busi­ness­es to pro­vide well­ness apps to their cus­tomers or em­ploy­ees.

“We do not pro­vide any di­rect-to-cus­tomer ser­vices at this time,” he not­ed.

How­ev­er, he ad­vised that cur­rent­ly, com­pa­nies can con­tact HRMATT to ac­cess well­ness app ser­vices to their em­ploy­ees, ex­plain­ing that the sign-up process is easy as HRMATT has on­go­ing we­bi­na­rs to ed­u­cate com­pa­nies about the var­i­ous well­ness ben­e­fits and sav­ings that com­pa­nies can en­joy.

On the cost of the ser­vice, he said this varies de­pend­ing on the size of the com­pa­ny, adding that there are var­i­ous pack­ages avail­able.

Stat­ing that Pa­tient Con­nect pro­vides low-cost well­ness so­lu­tions as pub­lic health­care ac­cess may some­times be chal­leng­ing and pri­vate health­care may be out of the reach of av­er­age cit­i­zens, Mu­radali added there may be well­ness app ser­vices af­ford­able to un­der $100 a month re­gard­less of whether peo­ple have group health plans or not.