Kasco Tecnologia, spin off from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), develops, with support from FAPESP's Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (PIPE), a solution to improve the management of hospital flows, both in public and private institutions.
Within a hospital there are bottlenecks that are often common to several health units spread across Brazil. One of the problems reported by both healthcare managers and patients concerns the time spent between entering the unit and arriving at the healthcare professional's desk for the consultation.
Another problem in search of a solution: many people schedule appointments or exams, but do not show up on the scheduled day, place and time, impacting the flow of care. A third obstacle for the person to be cured efficiently is usually the treatment itself. Not to mention the patient who is treated and medicated, but who does not follow medical recommendations when he returns home.
To ensure more effective care, Kasco is developing a health management system, an area considered immune to crises.
“Through the review of processes, the result of various assessments and the use of technology, our system will address the main problems identified by healthcare managers”, he states. Diogo Gará Caetano, director of R&D at Kasco.
According to him, improving waiting times in service queues through technology is something possible. One of the ways is to place the patient in a kind of virtual queue before leaving home. If the hospital or office is very busy, for example, the person can receive this information and reschedule themselves to arrive at the location later. “We can optimize all processes to avoid waiting,” says Caetano.
The strategy to reduce the number of missed exams or appointments may also involve a robot, explains the Kasco representative. According to data analyzed to set up the hospital management platform, one of the reasons that explains the so-called absenteeism on the part of patients is the fear of more invasive procedures, such as, for example, colonoscopy. “People often miss work out of fear. What artificial intelligence can do, in this case, in addition to remembering the date, time and location of the procedure, is to inform the patient how the exam is carried out and answer any questions so that they feel safer”, says Caetano.
The same procedure may apply at the conclusion of the consultation. “The solution here is to digitize all the information and set up a kind of answering machine to take care of the patient. It can inform where to buy a certain medicine, which generic medicines correspond to that prescription and even remind the patient of the right time to take the medicine”, says Caetano.
The system under development, which is 80% ready to operate – the other 20% will be developed together with the client – can work both in applications on mobile devices and on web platforms. “The user will be able to make the choice. The application is, in fact, a form of communication. We don’t necessarily need it for the platform to work”, says the director of Kasco.
The programs, which are already being tested in some health units in the city of São Bernardo do Campo, in Greater São Paulo, and should soon enter the Mário Gatti hospital network, in Campinas, also allow for an accurate assessment of the care that is offered. Through radio base microstations installed where patients circulate, the system allows people to evaluate, in real time, how the care is being provided. “We are able to know, for example, how many patients passed through the location in a given period of time and also what the average delay in care has been. The system can capture people’s responses and generate reports with service statistics”, says Caetano.
The health management and assessment system developed by Kasco, created five years ago, is yet another frontier that the company's group of scientists is trying to tackle. The company also sells artificial intelligence solutions using images, facial recognition technologies and power grid inspection systems using thermal vision, among several other technologies.
original article published on the Fapesp Research for Innovation website.
