When technology meets health, great results are obtained. A clear example can be seen with VivaWella healthtech Latin American that emerged during one of the most complicated moments of the pandemic and has managed to maintain constant growth since then.
Its main objective is to provide personalized remote care based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and promote an improvement in the health and well-being of families and employees of affiliated companies. In the end, not only is personal well-being taken care of, but it is the basis for increasing the performance of an organization.
To learn more about this project, at Greeting We had the opportunity to interview Dr. Edgar Mercadowho Chief Medical Officer of VivaWell. As part of his training, he graduated from National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). Additionally, he has master’s degrees in different administrative fields associated with the health sector.
How and when was VivaWell born?
It all started in 2020 and was as a result of the pandemic. Although these types of health emergencies have always existed, one of our objectives was to identify a way to achieve the lowest possible number of casualties.
Unfortunately, there were a large number of people who died and when analyzing each case it was observed that the majority had risk factors such as chronic degenerative diseases.
With respect to Mexico, when we talk about health prevention, we only think about vaccination, although in reality there are more strategies that can be followed. All this led us to think about a way to do something before a high-mortality disease appears in patients to anticipate the events. The result is VivaWell, which started in Argentina and later we brought it to Mexico.
Our greatest desire is to be able to reach all people but everything must be achieved gradually. That is why at this time we focus at the business level to analyze the health status of workers.
How does VivaWell work?
We design a patient health path based on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. First, each person is asked how they feel and a questionnaire of 50 questions is prepared that is quite simple to answer.
The next step is to schedule an appointment through telemedicine to perform a clinical evaluation. With this, both results are compared because although a patient claims that he feels well, he may actually have signs of health problems without knowing it.
Based on the results, each patient is channeled with a health coach and various goals are set based on your status. The main objective is to guarantee everyone’s compliance.
An alarming fact is that Mexicans do not have the habit of going to a doctor preventively. In most cases it is done until the discomfort is of high intensity or the disease is in an advanced state.
Are all the services offered by VivaWell remote?
The first part of the review and analysis of each patient is done remotely because we know that time is one of the main limitations for workers. Additionally, we have the service of telephone calls and in-person consultations. In the end, our goal is to offer all the facilities to take care of people’s health.
Based on our work, today we are one of the companies with the most medical data housed in a clinical file in Latin America.
How many doctors are part of your staff and how many patients have they treated?
Currently we have a group of 20 doctors distributed at different times to always be available to offer video consultations. While our provider network is around 5,000 health professionals ranging from specialists to laboratory personnel, ambulances, pharmacies and home doctors.
And with respect to our clients, we have signed agreements with 57 companies, although we remain in constant growth. The companies we work with are of all sizes and while some have dozens of employees, there are others with thousands and our goal is to take care of the health of each one.
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