Telehealth innovator brings paradigm shift to healthcare in Latin America

A diabetic person checking her blood sugar level. Photograph: Voisin/Phanie / Rex Features

By Hope Traficanti

AccuHealth utilises virtual clinics and remote patient monitoring, helping to save money and improve the management of chronic health conditions. Now the inclusive business in expanding into Colombia

When José B. was diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension seven years ago, the 57-year-old Chilean followed the treatment plan set by his local public health facility, which included medication and a special diet. While his condition stabilised, he could not visit the health clinic often and counted on his family’s support to stick to his diet and care regimen. As time went on, he realised that his condition was deteriorating: it took a couple of accidents in which he lost consciousness to convince José to take better care of himself and stick to his diet.

There are millions of people like José across Latin America, which has seen a spike in the incidence of chronic non-communicable diseases like type-2 diabetes in the last 20 years. Health expenditures have also skyrocketed along with the demand for quality treatment. While the medical community has made significant progress in treating these diseases, Latin America’s public health systems are not coping with the challenges of treatment – often focusing on acute care rather than prevention and monitoring.

For chronic diseases like diabetes, this short-term focus is wholly insufficient to avoid costly and debilitating complications. Preventable complications, including amputations and retinopathy blindness in diabetes, are not only expensive to treat, but lead to productivity losses that exacerbate poverty. However, studies have shown that chronic-disease complications – and costs – can be reduced if patients receive regular monitoring. In fact, with proper care, people with chronic diseases can have similar life expectancy and quality of life as healthy people, which reduces the burden on the entire health system.

In 2014, AccuHealth, Latin America’s first telehealth monitoring company, launched an initiative in Chile to monitor and stabilise chronic disease patients using predictive information technologies. Telehealth monitoring allows for remote patient monitoring of a range of chronic conditions through the use of home-based digital technology.

AccuHealth focuses on combining evidence-based remote health monitoring with big data, predictive modeling and data-mining to help people in developing countries to live longer, healthier lives. By identifying small changes in health status early on, remote monitoring prevents complications and costly hospitalisations.

The company’s model is unique among telehealth businesses for its emphasis on prevention and monitoring of people in remote areas without access to traditional health clinics. It utilises the wealth of medical evidence on chronic conditions to anticipate disease-related events and treat them according to each patient’s unique health profile, diagnosis and environment. Recent studies indicate that tele-monitored patients can decrease the annual costs of managing their diseases by nearly $4,500 (£3,467).

In addition to monitoring patients’ chronic health conditions from home and providing 24/7 support, AccuHealth is allowing hospitals and clinics to optimise their services and increase the geographical coverage of specialists. It also allows health systems and insurance companies to better manage their clients’ needs, reducing the incidence of medical emergencies and containing costs. In addition, the company has launched a free preventative service, which utilises tele-monitoring technology to involve patients’ entire support networks in reinforcing healthy behaviours.

Having followed more than 9,000 patients in Chile, AccuHealth is now expanding into Colombia, where it is focused on supporting the public health system.

According to Dr. Xavier Urtubey, AccuHealth’s CEO and co-founder, “Colombia has taken a big step in opening its doors to innovation and we are convinced this is the best country to continue our business’s expansion”, he said. “While Colombia is a logical first step, we are already analysing other markets for future expansion such as México, Brazil and Argentina, where there is great growth potential.”

The company’s inclusive business model is based on a disruptive paradigm shift. Until AccuHealth entered the market, clinics and hospitals were considered the primary access points for healthcare. With AccuHealth’s model, patients are now cared for through virtual clinics as well as by their regular healthcare providers, allowing them to save an average of 55% in healthcare costs. In Chile, this enabled AccuHealth to monitor and control 8,500 patients’ health conditions based on their unique histories and environments.

Meeting its business goals in Chile provided ample evidence of the potential for impact across the region. While there are inherent challenges in introducing innovation within a public system, there are huge benefits to these developing economies. Of AccuHealth’s 2,000 chronic patients from the public system, more than 40% were from low or very low-income communities.

The company’s main challenge in expanding has been adjusting its model to the specific needs of each partner – including insurance companies, healthcare providers and even employers. Some resistance has also been encountered from stakeholders skeptical about the program’s functionality; this has intensified AccuHealth’s focus on continuous measurement and demonstrating results.

The Chilean experience also provided important lessons for a private company partnering with a national public health system. Surprisingly, it was Chile’s national health system that first showed interest in the benefits of remote health monitoring and jumped at the opportunity to pilot AccuHealth’s initiative. This in turn provided AccuHealth with an opportunity to refine its model and – after demonstrating concrete evidence of its value – gear up for its expansion.

Now that the initiative has been rolled out in Colombia, with further plans to scale up throughout Latin America, AccuHealth’s management is analysing each country’s unique risks and opportunities in order to adapt the programme accordingly. The one common factor is a rise in chronic diseases, resulting in escalating healthcare costs. But innovative telehealth solutions must be tailored to each unique context in order to provide consistent high-quality care in both public and private systems.

As part of its commitment to the Business Call to Action (BCtA) – a multi-stakeholder initiative to address poverty through inclusive core business practices – AccuHealth aims to reach 1 million more patients like José in Latin America by 2020. For José, the benefits are obvious: “Since I started this programme I feel safer and calmer because I am always accompanied in my care. I have also learned to identify symptoms before a health crisis occurs. My quality of life has improved since the first day I entered this monitoring program, for which I am very grateful.”

Content on this page is provided by Business Call to Action, and originally appeared on the The Guardian Business and the Sustainable Development Goals Hub