Portuguese health insurer, Médis, and AI-triage company, Infermedica have established a partnership which has resulted in the recent implementation of Infermedica's Call Centre Triage tool in Médis' Clinical Contact Centre.

Part of the insurance holding group, Grupo Ageas Portugal, Médis was motivated by its aim to find a more modern solution to the primary issues of its current triage system by improving user experience and efficiency.

An Infermedica case study published today has found that the implementation has improved the patient interview process and prevented unnecessary urgent care visits and appointments.

WHY IT MATTERS

Médis has applied Infermedica's solution in approximately 24,000 triage processes, with 99.4% of clients’ symptoms being covered by the tool.

The case study found that 17% of clients intended to use urgent care services versus just 8% who were recommended by Infermedica’s solution. Infermedica’s solution increased the use of self-care treatments by 18%.

This is critical to avoid overwhelming medical facilities during the pandemic, as well as preventing patients from putting themselves at risk by attending medical facilities.

Futhermore, the results have shown that the partnership has allowed Médis to improve their overall clients' and nurses' experience and streamline operation processes. Infermedica was also able to improve the triage and recommendation capabilities of their Call Centre Triage solution, allowing for connectivity to other services provided by Médis, such as telemedicine services and online consultations.

The partnership has increased the capability of its Call Centre Triage solution to recommend the right actions for given symptoms. Infermedica's team have broadened the database of risk factors, conditions and symptoms, with a special focus on paediatrics. During the project, Infermedica’s medical team, with the support of Médis, added and modified approximately 200 medical factors in the database.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Steadily expanding their AI triage solutions across Europe, last week, one of Poland's largest private healthcare providers, PZU Zdrowie announced the extension of their three-year partnership with Infemedica, to implement the AI-enabled Call Centre Triage solution and provide patients with more streamlined healthcare advice.

ON THE RECORD

Piotr Kurkiewicz, data science consultant at Infermedica said: "The project with Medis was a great adventure for us - cooperation with a company experienced in telemedicine solutions allowed us to look at our platform from a new perspective. We are pleased with the results of introducing the Call Centre Triage at Médis' Clinical Contact Centre - preventing unnecessary emergency visits, improving the user experience of nurses and supporting the work of call centre coordinators."

Henrique Figueiredo, innovation project manager at Grupo Ageas Portugal said: "One of the main advantages, compared to the previous solution, is that the Infermedica platform is dynamic. This means the system has a clinical update every 3 months, which makes it more and more accurate and improved with usage. Also, the solution has a solid clinical knowledge base, which is developed and constantly updated by Infermedica’s team of medical doctors."