Before COVID-19, it would have been easy to imagine that producing and distributing an effective vaccine would have been the biggest challenge of fighting a global pandemic. But as it’s turned out, some of the biggest challenges of the COVID-19 virus have been public health challenges – getting people to behave in ways that reduce the spread of disease and getting them to take the vaccine in...
The Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) is launching a WhatsApp for Business offering for patients, resulting in a 70% automation of its interactions, the entity has announced.
This latest introduction will complement SEHA’s existing platforms for bookings, which includes its patient portal, smartphone app, and call centre.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
The WhatsApp channel – which can be accessed by...
Research at St George’s University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has found the use of WhatsApp in the NHS to be “a privacy and clinical safety timebomb”, according to a press announcement.
A soon-to-be published study of 77 staff members in the trauma and orthopaedics department revealed that 87 percent of staff used smartphone apps to discuss patient cases at work, despite 56 percent not being...
A majority of UK National Health Service trusts have no official policies to discourage the use of consumer messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger among clinicians and staff, according to a new CommonTime report.
The study found that despite the clear privacy risks posed by those apps, many trusts also don't provide other more secure alternatives for staff to use.
This is just...
As social media becomes more ingrained in everyday life it has also become increasingly a part of the digital health space. Even governments have taken notice of the potential of the platforms, creating partnerships and initiatives centered around social media aiming to keep its populations healthy. For example, in January the Canadian government announced an initiative to use artificial...
Argentinian ambulance doctors are using WhatsApp to fasttrack their patients’ care. Study data presented at the Argentine Congress of Cardiology’s 2017 conference suggests that using the free messaging app to send diagnostic electrocardiograms (ECGs) directly to a hospital’s catheterization lab allowed heart attack patients to bypass the emergency department and reduce mortality.
“We found that...
While a tiny percentage of Ebola cases are popping up in the United States and Europe, the epicenter of the disease is and remains in West Africa, an area where mobile health initiatives are often deployed, especially those that take advantage of text messaging and other short message services. Texting is a good way to educate a large swath of the population so they can identify symptoms of the...
Although relatively few cases have been reported outside West Africa, Ebola is both a top headline and a public health concern in the Western world, with eight confirmed cases in the United States. Even in the UK, Ebola was a topic of discussion at a recent TechCrunch Disrupt Conference panel on digital health.
"I think the question is no longer if, but it's when," Dominic King, a surgeon at...
