Strengthening service delivery is crucial to the achievement of the health-related goals of many nations. Yet, how is this to be achieved? What actions are required of governments?
Hoda Eldardiry, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech is working with a healthcare startup called LiteraSeed Inc. to launch a technology that bridges communication gaps between patients and their medical providers.
With startups, to be effective these bodies need to provide a comprehensive range of health services, appropriate to the needs of the target population, including preventative, curative, palliative and rehabilitative services and health promotion activities.
In the U.S., nearly 80 percent of misdiagnoses are related to miscommunication, resulting in up to 200,000 avoidable hospital deaths. This is according to The Joint Commission, a nonprofit that accredits more than 22,000 health care organizations and programs nationwide. Those errors — more than half of which occur because patients struggle with low health literacy or language barriers — cost the health care system about $238 billion annually.
Working under a nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Eldardiry’s Machine Learning Laboratory will harness cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to integrate LiteraSeed’s existing visual-based patient communication tool with electronic health record systems for more efficient, data-driven health care.
Preventing fatal errors
“Cultural barriers, less access to care, and language and literacy barriers put already vulnerable communities at greater risk of misdiagnosis, which can lead to critical medical issues and death,” says Aziza Ismail, LiteraSeed co-founder and chief operating officer.
She adds: “Enhancing communication is crucial for improving the efficiency and quality of health care services as well as patient outcomes.”
Ismail lost her 10-year-old cousin to anaphylactic shock while the family waited for treatment in an emergency department. She said this preventable death was caused by a breakdown in communication between medical providers and her family.
After two more life-threatening incidents in her family — one ending in the death of a baby — Ismail founded LiteraSeed to close critical communication gaps between patients and their medical care teams. To address this problem, the company has developed a visual-based tool that helps patients better communicate critical health information, regardless of language proficiency or health literacy.
Solutions for patients and providers
The goal of the project is to benefit not only patients, but also health care providers who are time-constrained, overburdened, and sometimes misled by miscommunication.
