The International Patients Union Conference (IPUC) this year witnessed launch of SHE (Safety, Health and Empowerment) app, aimed to empower women and nudge them to take care of their health. Besides, some of the new features of the Patient Union app were also launched. These include patient-reported outcomes feature, wherein users will be able to rate doctors, hospitals, healthcare professionals and government schemes.
Dr Rajendra Pratap Gupta, Founder, IPU and Digital Health Associates, informed that the IPU app will take the mediators away between the patients and the providers and allow them to directly report the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) via app over the next few weeks, and also rate the doctors, hospitals and government schemes, besides seeking authentic information on medicines.
He further announced the integration of the e-Sanjeevani service with the Patients Union app to facilitate teleconsultation, so that patients get access to authentic doctors, removing the barriers of distance and time.
In addition to it, a key tech-driven initiative launched at the conference was TRx – a new-age prescription keeping with the needs of the technology-enabled healthcare delivery and aiming to create awareness and transparency for patients who are prescribed tech products and services, and also enable clinicians to give the proper counselling on how to use digital health tools.
TRx is a step towards shared decision-making in medical practice, leveraging technology for patient engagement and improving treatment outcomes.
Addressing the conference, Dr Thomas Zeltner, Chairman, WHO Foundation, said, “Technology can bring a lot of required change. He emphasised the need to use technology in a way where it increases the amount of time doctors spend with patients.
Discussions on various topics took place, focussing on innovative solutions that can transform healthcare and the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLMs) in patient care. Many panellists agreed on the fact that AI-ML holds a lot of promise for improving patient care, but it will need validation and research to realise its full potential.