Digital Hospital

Digital Hospital is our most ambitious project for the next five years and it is included in our 5 year strategy for 2022 -2026. This project is aimed to facilitate the access to health services for handicapped children in Colombia.

The project will include an app and our patients and their families will solve
particularly three needs: 

1. Access to medical practices and therapies by the app, that will reduce the frequency and number of displacements to hospital, optimizing costs and improving their quality of life. 

2. Access to administrative procesess by the app, reducing time and costs for treatments. (Billing, autorizations and paymetns among others) 
*In Colombia, health is a right but the service is provided by private insurance companies with very specific processes. 

3. Caregivers will have a special on line place to share experiences and build a community. 

Roosevelt Digital pretends to be a strong platform to bring health services to the most vulnerable and remote areas where handicaped people has not the possibility to receive any medical attention. 

The global disability report of World Health Organization estimates that 15% of the world population lives with a disability. In Colombia the prevalence is 6.3% of the population and.

In Colombia we have 2.624.000 persons in handicapped condition but 53% of them had any medical treatment because of economical reasons mainly.  With Digital Hospital strategy we have to goal to optimize health services for our patients and to reach 35.000 new children in a handicapped condition waiting for their treatments. Consequently, their families will be benefited too.

An important statistic too is that 90% of our patients are from very low-income families and 40% of them come from another regions of the country thanks to our high complexity attention and because we have an Excellence Center for Orphan Diseases.

Annually our Institute, serve with 165.000 therapies, 107.000 medical specialized consultations and 14.000 surgeries approximately. That represents we will serve to the most vulnerable communities affected by some disability.

Digital Hospital is a very ambitous strategy to be an extramural  hospital available 24/7. It includes software implementation to automate medical and administrative processes, data analysis and to offer telemedical services. Strategy include an app and basically it is a ‘virtual patient path’ where he can solve administrative processes, access to telemedicine services and belong to some interesting communities. The app will have specific features for caregivers who normally are uncharged to solve medical issues for their relatives and the app will offer technical support to guide users. The basic technology needed is a smart phone and wifi conexion.

The app will be developed with artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, interoperability, and analytics and processes management. We pretend to be an extramural hospital reachable to everyone.  

In Colombia, 53% of the population in handicapped condition is from very low-income families. It means indeed, with low access to education and with more basic needs unsatisfied. That’s the target of our users, 90% of our patients are from very low-income families. Normally they live in the peripheral areas with more difficulty to come to the hospital and they have no option but using public transportation.

In Colombia, health administrative services are provided by private insurance companies, each one has a very specific process to allow users access to health services. In other words, users need to pass some administrative steps before receive some medical service. Digital Hospital is designed to guide and facilitate this process, even providing telemedicine services reducing time and cost for patients.

To involve users in the Digital Hospital strategy we will have different focus groups to know their pains as patients and their expectations as the app users. It will be two different groups with our current patients and with potential patients and in both cases we will invite their caregivers.

We already have an app, which will be the base of the new one. As well, we have a strong data with needs and suggestions of our patients and after focus groups we will prioritize issues and offer solutions with the new app.  

As we know, Covid-19 represents a challenge for the society in general. It changed most of our ways to do different activities like working, study or home tasks like buy food and spending free time, among others. Unfortunately this reality affected the most vulnerable communities making even more difficult the access to basic rights like health and education and showing more the economical and social inequalities. For example, our hospital serves mostly low-income families and due they lost their jobs they had to stop medical treatments and therapies in our hospital. Consequently it affected their recovering and indeed their health.

Our Digital Hospital strategy will have several features to facilitate medical services access to our users and that will be a tool for disease surveillance and to detect another one. At the same time, the app will be connected with our social networks and web site where we will spread scientific information about relevant health subjects and we will create collective campaigns promoting preventive habits like physical activities, nutritional tips and mental talks.

Taking advantage of Covid-19 context which boosted digital transformation, the app will be easily adapted by users and it will reach more people with more telemedicine services. 

We already have separated software to offer different services and a basic app but according with our needs it is not so functional now. The current app works with basic features to ask medical appointments and some small consultations about services.  However, with pandemics, on line services growth by different platforms in our hospital and now it is necessary to gather them and unify our service in just one app, to facilitate users’ experience.

Workers have also access to the app for basic consultations, but also in this case, services are limited.

This new app will be more effective offering more services and a customer service in real time. It will allow to follow up the recovering patients, will safe time for them facilitate administrative processes like billing and payment. 

Digital Hospital will be an innovative solution because it shows technology and digital development as a driver of change in communities where this kind of development is still new. Strategy is aimed to facilitate health services access reducing time and costs for these low-income families with some relative in a handicap condition. Through the app caregivers will ask medical appointments, patients will have therapies and telemedicine consultations and they and their families will share experiences with other communities in similar conditions across the country.

Digital Hospital will open more opportunities for persons in handicapped condition from low-income families. They are currently 90% of our patients and 40% of them are from other remote areas. For this families, it will be an improvement to do administrative processes by the app and to receive medical attention, both, will save money and time for them considering the multiple difficulties of mobility for a handicapped person in Bogota. The app will function like a 24/7 hospital reachable to everyone with a smart phone and wifi conexion.

Most of our patients are located in areas where wifi service is already implemented and the usability of smart phone is 93% which means the access will not be a limitation for this tool. In the near future, when wifi covers other remote areas, we will be able to reach this population. 

Our hospital serves annually 45000 patients, including personal medical attentions and telemedicine attentions. We expect to increase this numbre by implementing the app as part of our strategy. 

Currently we work with a basic app which is reached by 500 hundred persons in a year due the limited utility for patients and families. Nowadays, we have been automated different services as medical as administrative but all separated that’s why the scope of beneficiaries is very short.

In one year we expect to reach 5,000 app users mainly from Bogota. That will be the first stage of the strategy and we will analyze if we can go forward or we should apply some changes or improvements.

In five years we expect to reach 50,000 users including our patients, their families and new users. 

Measuring our impact goals allow us a constant evaluation of our services and the true utility of our tool. According with our objective to facilitate access to health services, it will be crucial to follow these indicators

Socio-economical status of app users

Because it is crucial to measure how much we are helping vulnerable population as is our goal

Medical services received by the app

This indicator will show us if our users end using the app to take medical services.

After that we will be able to include more services or delete others.

Number of administrative processes finished by the app

This number is important because one of the biggest pains for our users

Percentage of caregivers accessing to the app

We need to know if our users are mostly caregivers or patients to design the services in the app

Percentage of patients accessing to the app

We need to know if our users are mostly caregivers or patients to design the services in the app

Time saved using the app

We will calculate how much time users spend doing administrative processes to reach medical attention, by this way we will measure the time they save using the app. This is another big pain for users.

Number of early diseases detection  

Early diseases detection is crucial to determinate treatments and right medications on patients.

We will measure the number of users who detected a disease in a very early stage using our services by the app.   

Percentage of male and female accessing to the app

Measuring app access by gender will allow us to orientate services according to the needs of male and female users. 

STAFF

DEDICATION TIME

Full time staff

3 personas

Part-time

10 persons

External Advisors

10 persons

Software Providers

2 persons

TEAM MEMBER

DESCRIPTION

INPUTS

Board Directors

All of them are very relevant personalities, Directors, CEOs, Opinion Leaders and former public workers, including a former Minister of Health.

They are promoters of this initiative, knowing that we will be pioneers in this kind of service, trying to benefit as much people as possible with our services.

José Ignacio Zapata

Hospital Director for 24 years

Pediatric orthopedist

(Specialized on knees)

He is the intellectual head of the project and he created it based on his vast experience with patients and health needs for more than 35 years.

Carlos Mendoza

CFO of Roosevelt Institute for 3 years

Expert in the Public Health System in Colombia

Advisor in Health Administrative Organizations

Thanks to his management experience on health matters, he is the general manager of the project. Assuring the quality and functionality of the app.

Steering Committee

Relevant professionals on medical, administrative, health quality and human resources fields.

They promote Roosevelt Digital among the stakeholders, their teams and provide practical inputs to nurture the project.

Advisors

Two experts in digital development

They are experts in digital matters advising other digital projects in an international level. They help us to structure the app technically and to forecast digital tendencies to guide our project.

Providers

International digital companies

They will assure technical implementation, following and monitoring of the app.

Our solution’s leadership team is interdisciplinary trying to involve human and technical aspects in our solution. It means we consider different points of view to design our tool. 

Firstly, we consider that everyone with no exception has the right to health services. Indigenous, LGBTI group members, violence victims, single mothers, afro descendents and other diverse group members have access to our services with no discrimination.    

The fact to work with persons in disability condition make us to think more carefully about their rights and their difficulties to be consider in the health system. That’s why we will measure the number of caregivers using the app, because normally behind a person in disability condition there is someone making many tasks for him/her. 

Our majority of patients have two vulnerable conditions: one is to come from low-income families and the second one is to have a disability condition because of one or multiple diseases. We want to serve to this specific group not forgetting others ones. We think they need more facilities to improve their quality of life and we want to overcome physical and technological barriers. Roosevelt Digital hopes to be an alternative for them in terms of health services and inclusion, equity and diversity. 

We consider our Digital Hospital stratety as pioneering providing health services for persons in a handicapped condition from low-income families. It is pioneering because it reduces time and costs for them. Using the app they could fill administrative processes by the app and even they can take telemedical services there. Currently, all administrative processes must be done personally and they can take only a few services by telemedicine. We already invested in several digital softwares but they are working all separately and that’s not very useful for users considering their difficulties of mobility and usually all patients need a caregiver behind of them. Our main barrier actually is the budget. We have a previous important investment done, we have the team, we have the infrastructure and the stakeholders able to cooperate, and we want to make it happen with Solve support. We are sure to impact thousands of vulnerable families and bring them a better quality of life.

Roosevelt Hospital is already a very well-known pediatrics hospital with 74 years of experience in our services, we are one of the most ten important social initiatives of century 20th and we received the Accreditation in Excellence that only 5 hospitals in Colombia have. That is an example of our high quality in medical processes, transparency and health professional’s profile. If Solve help us will be a great achievement as a project and will win great recognition to help Colombian children after this critical pandemics of Covid-19. 

One of our short term goals is to offer services in an international level. We already do but we want to have a more agressive strategy and we take Roosevelt Digital as an excellent opportunity to expand our services. That's why Public Realtions including marketing strategy and social and global media will be useful in this purpose. The possibility to connect local and international partners will be the key to reach the market in other countries and also media could be a very important window to our project. 

As the nature of our project is to develop services by technology, we constantly will need support in software/hardware, web design and data analysis, because we need to respond to our market and that dynamic process will be the key to our success. We need permanent actualization of our systems and implement new tactics to work with the global trends in terms of digital applications and health services.

MIT is already a world reference of technological develpment and high quality education. We would love to partner with School of Engineering and School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences to strengthen our strategy with human centered technologies. 

We would love to mee also, a 'brother hospital' in USA to share experiences, knowledge, courses and cooperation projects. 

Finally, it will be very helpful to meet a devices medical physical rehabilitation providers to analyse last tendences, have a commercial relation and explore cooperation projects.