A group of volunteers, led by Alexandre Teixeira, a finalist in the Integrated Masters in Medicine (MIM) course at the University of Algarve (UAlg), has just launched the platform ICAM – Scientific Information to Support Physicians. The goal is to make available, in a more accessible and organized way, the most relevant and up-to-date scientific information about CoVID-19, to support health professionals in making appropriate clinical decisions.
“With this platform, doctors now have quick access to information”, explains Alexandre Teixeira. After completing his medical degree at UAlg, Alexandre also holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Oxford.
Asked what motivated this collaboration, he explains: “it started from a challenge launched by the director of the UAlg course of Medicine, Isabel Palmeirim, when there was a need felt by doctors, including those in the Algarve, to keep themselves scientifically informed. rigorous, current and constant on the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen and the disease it causes, Covid-19”.
This platform is based on an algorithm developed by a team of volunteers, made up of companies such as Algardata, and task force volunteer Tech4Covid that, in an automated way, daily updates a database with all new scientific publications indexed in the three main repositories for the biomedical area: PubMed, BioRxiv and MedRxiv.
A team of reviewers, including physicians, researchers and medical students, conducts a systematic review of new publications, identifies the most relevant articles and creates a synopsis in Portuguese for direct publication in the website associated, with all the information being aggregated by area of clinical relevance, to facilitate its consultation.
But “the platform does not issue opinions, our intention is only to present the articles related to Covid-19 that we think are relevant”, emphasizes Alexandre Teixeira.
As an example, he explains that, in the articles already available, it is possible to find one that answers the following question: "should all health professionals wear a mask?"
However, the "discussion/conclusion" will never be an opinion of the authors/reviewers of the platform, the answer will always be given taking into account the scientific evidence contained in the article(s) under review, being at the discretion of the physician, read or not the original article for an acting decision.
This open platform will also soon allow subscription to alerts on updates within specific areas of interest. Each synopsis has a link to the original reviewed articles.
O ICAM-COVID project19 it was born from the voluntary collaboration between medical students, general training interns and specialist doctors from the University Hospital Center of Algarve and ABC- Algarve Biomedical Center, investigators of the Biosystems & Integrative Sciences Institute (BioISI) – Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, in partnership with the companies Algardata, Senso Comum, and the task force Voluntary Tech4Covid.
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