HEATHTECH FIRMS DEVELOP AI TOOL FOR HIV/ AIDS PATIENTS IN AFRICA

Cape Town-based healthtech firm Vantage Health Technologies and the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) have unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) project, which they say will significantly improve care for HIV/ AIDS patients in Africa.

Vantage, a company in the BroadReach Group, says techenabled solutions have become critical in the management and treatment of patients in Africa to improve the patient care processes.

The companies say an estimated 25 million people are living with HIV in Africa and 8.1 million of these are virally unsuppressed.

To assist with patient care, Vantage and IHVN have been piloting an AI-enabled patient retention solution, which they say has been able to predict and positively influence the behaviour of high-risk HIV/AIDS patients.

This development comes on the back of growing calls from the International Telecommunication Union and World Health Organisation to expand the use of AI in the health sector on a global scale.

The Vantage AI solution helps HIV/AIDS out-patients to keep taking their medicines, as well as return to hospitals or clinics for regular scheduled treatment.

The patient retention solution uses data from the patient history to predict if they will miss their next clinic appointment, with the assumption that missing the appointment means the patient will drop off treatment, as they are not present to collect their medication.

Annika Lindorsson Krugel, solutions manager of Vantage Health Technologies, explains: “The solution uses a machine learning model to identify patients at high-risk of missing their next appointment and produces patient lists that are given to clinical staff to conduct various interventions to prevent patients from missing their next appointment.

“SMS messages, calls and home visits for those without phone numbers are then arranged to provide personal attention to each patient ahead of their scheduled clinic appointments.”

The solution has been implemented in HIV treatment and care programmes across Nigeria and South Africa, and Krugel says it is yielding similar successes.

“The solution is an innovative example of what can be achieved when artificial intelligence truly powers human action.”

In Nigeria, the patient retention solution algorithm was trained on 330 000 IHVN patients, and the organisation says this pilot project was focused on the approximately 5000 identified at-risk patients.

Of these, IHVN says, 91% of patients on the predictive list who received an intervention (SMS, phone call or home visit) were up-todate in the month of intervention, meaning they were retained in care. This compares to 55% retention in a comparison group who did not receive the intervention.

Mercy Omozuafoh, programme manager for care and support at the IHVN, says her teams have been using the AI solution as a tool to prioritise existing interventions for high-risk HIV/AIDS patients in Nigeria.

“The project has demonstrated the effectiveness of proactive tracking of patients living with HIV and has made us understand the importance of interventions we are implementing. It has broadened our minds and we are able to scale up the solution to include more facilities,” says Omozuafoh.

She adds the predictive model was rolled out to about 30 000 patients at the General Hospital Kudwa at Bwari in the Federal Capital Territory, the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital in Lafia in the Nasarawa State, and General Hospital Ahoada in the Rivers State.