- Worldwide, it is estimated that there are one billion people living with some type of disability.
- Each year the figure increases due to factors such as the aging of the population and the prevalence of chronic diseases.
- Although telemedicine is a booming tool since the pandemic, one of the biggest pending issues was the development of an inclusive platform.
One of the consequences of the pandemic was an acceleration of digitization. Especially within the field of health, it is possible to observe in a better way how the use of technological tools has increased. More and more doctors and patients use the telemedicine but one of the pending issues was to specify an inclusive option.
Alliance in favor of patients with disabilities
In this case, Ever Health, in collaboration with Fundación ONCE and SmartCity Cluster, has rebuilt and certified its health platform as the first inclusive telemedicine platform. The objective is to promote remote care in a more accessible way for all people, in addition to adapting its technology so that people with disabilities can use digital medical services.
The agreement signed by Rafael García, CEO of Ever Health, José Luis Martínez Donoso, general director of Fundación ONCE; and Mariano Barroso, honorary president of the Smart City Cluster, establishes various measures so that people with disabilities can access the services offered by telemedicine and has been developed in several phases.
After a diagnosis of universal accessibility carried out by the ONCE Foundation, Ever Health worked on the redesign of the medical care platform, also developed internally by the company.
How does it work?
In the process, to achieve a better platform usability and accessibility experience, we had the support and collaboration of the associative movement of people with disabilitieswho determined the usefulness and effectiveness of the changes applied to allow access to digital medical services for all people.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), more than one billion people live on the entire planet with some type of disability. While each year the figure is increasing due to factors such as the aging of the population and the prevalence of chronic diseases.
In Mexico, the number of people with disabilities exceeds 7 million, of which 52% are women and 48% are men. Of this population, 2.9 million report that the activities of walking, going up or down represent greater difficulty, while for 2.7 million the greatest difficulty is seeing, even when wearing glasses.
By identifying areas of opportunity to reduce barriers to access to telemedicine services for people with disabilitiesthe allied companies worked together to offer a solution that attends to the well-being of this population.
“Some of the main changes made to the platform include shading areas on buttons and the correct color contrast, text size, the implementation of tabulator control, labeling of buttons and images; as well as the JAWS / NVDA screen reading tools application (programs that help people with visual impairments). These changes, together with previous improvements such as giving control to health personnel during the video consultation and the inclusion of subtitles and simultaneous translation into other languages, favor access and efficiency during consultations”, explains Andrea Alzaga, responsible for directing and presenting the project. at EverHealth.
He added that the company is committed to a care model focused on patients and health professionals. The service is based on medicine with value and aimed at different types of patients to achieve a real democratization of health with the possibility of incorporating technology into any platform. It also promotes better access and greater diagnostic capacity.
The digital medical services company had already made some optimizations to its platform during this pandemic period, with changes in video technology, adapted to achieve greater efficiency and empower patients and health professionals, thus complying with its pillars of Accessibility, Information security and Healthcare Quality.
“There are still many barriers to the use of digital medical services, which is why technological services in general and digital health services in particular must comply with the commitment to be developed for all people, regardless of limitations or digital capabilities. that they may have. At Ever Health we believe that technology should go unnoticed and be just the means to make health accessible, and that care needs for no reason of access are left unattended”, declared Rafael García, CEO of Ever Health.
However, the lack of universal accessibility and design for all prevents people with disabilities from using this type of tool. In this sense, all companies and all actors must strive to create a more sustainable society and reduce the digital divide, “especially for the elderly and/or those with disabilities or less technological capabilities”.
Likewise, Ever Health, as a member of the Smartcity Cluster, forms the ecosystem of companies oriented towards the creation of an intelligent urban model. In this sense, SmartCity Cluster supports the design and implementation of solutions for its associated companies, facilitating synergies with organizations such as the ONCE Foundation for all projects related to improving people’s quality of life.
The “Smart City” goes far beyond technology and its main objective is to improve the management of cities by optimizing the available resources to offer better public services to citizens.
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