App will “aggregate reliable information”
Next year, the Portuguese population will have an app that will gather information on key areas of disease prevention, alerting them to vaccinations to be taken and screenings to be carried out, allowing them to book appointments and suggesting the nearest locations, writes Lusa today.
The prevenção4all app, an initiative of the coordination of the Action Plan for Active and Healthy Ageing, in coordination with the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), will allow each citizen, in their personal area, to enter the necessary data so that, through artificial intelligence, they can receive, for example, suggestions on the best exercise plan in their particular case.
Speaking to Lusa, the plan’s coordinator, Nuno Marques, explained that the application will aggregate reliable information on matters such as the promotion of physical exercise, the prevention of addictive habits – namely tobacco and alcohol – and nutrition, as well as the areas of cardiovascular diseases, oncology, mental health, dementia, musculoskeletal diseases and vaccination.
“If we want people to participate actively, we have to take other steps. In addition to the information itself, we need to have this information structured so that people can ask questions straight away”, he said, emphasising that everything that will be made available is reliable because it will be disseminated by the plan’s coordinators, in conjunction with the DGS itself, as well as the scientific societies in each of the areas.
Using artificial intelligence, as well as individualised exercise plans, depending on the area the person is in, the app will provide information on the places where they can undertake it.
“This will increase people’s adherence and active participation in a process that they themselves should be involved in, within the freedom that each person has, but in a properly informed and empowered way,’ he said, rejecting the idea that this is to remove responsibility from the system.
As he explained, the application, which will begin to work gradually next year (it won’t have all the possibilities straight away), will also alert people, depending on their age group, to the vaccinations they need to have, providing a link so that they can book them at the health centre.
Another possibility is to send alerts for defined population-based cancer screenings, allowing requests to be issued and indicating the nearest places available for the tests.
“As well as certainly helping to increase uptake, it will also improve people’s lives in terms of access to prevention”, said Nuno Marques, explaining that the information will then be transmitted to the Ministry of Health’s information systems, “so that everything is recorded”, even if the person doesn’t have a family doctor.
Asked about data protection issues, he said that they don’t arise because it will be up to the user themselves, if they so choose, to enter their personal data. (In other words, if they don’t, nothing will be recorded.)
“It’s a platform developed for people, not for the system, which is a slightly different paradigm. It is the person who will have all the data”, he said, adding that the application will communicate with health professionals.
He also emphasised that measures such as this app – which can be used by people over 18 – “can have a big impact on health promotion and, therefore, on prevention, avoiding situations that lead to dependency later on, identifying illnesses early on while they are treatable”.
It does need to be said here, in the context of vaccines, that during the pandemic all populations were advised, by apparently reliable sources, that the various vaccines were “safe and effective”. Sadly, far too many discovered that they weren’t – some losing their lives as a result. These ‘glitches’ in reliable communication only came further down the line. Even last weekend there was a large story in Correio da Manhã about a woman whose life was altered forever (for the worse) after taking the Janssen vaccine. Thus, it is very important to realise that any reliable advice on what vaccines should be taken, is only advice. There are no vaccine mandates in this country, even though authorities have an approved list of vaccines that even children are expected to have taken in order to attend school. As many parents have discovered, there is nothing in law enforcing the approved list of vaccines.
Source material: LUSA
