Next year, the Portuguese will have an application that will bring together information on key areas of disease prevention, warning about vaccines to be taken and screenings to be carried out, allowing appointments and suggesting the nearest locations.
The prevention4all application, an initiative coordinated by the Action Plan for Active and Healthy Aging, in coordination with the Directorate-General for Health, will allow each citizen, in their personal area, to enter the necessary data so that, through intelligence artificial, you can receive, for example, suggestions about the best exercise plan in your particular case.
Speaking to Lusa, the plan's coordinator, Nuno Marques, explained that the application will add reliable information on matters such as the promotion of physical exercise, prevention of addictive habits – such as tobacco and alcohol – and nutrition, as well as areas of cardiovascular diseases, oncology, mental health, dementia, musculoskeletal diseases and vaccination.
«If we want people's active participation, we have to take other steps. In addition to the information itself, have this information structured so that people can immediately resolve their doubts", he stated, highlighting that everything that will be made available is reliable as it will be released by the coordination of the plan, in conjunction with the DGS itself, counting also with scientific societies in each area.
Using artificial intelligence, in addition to individualized exercise plans, depending on the area where the person is, the application will provide information about the places where they can do it.
“This will increase people's adherence and active participation in a process that they must be involved in, within the freedom that each person has, but in a duly informed and trained way”, said the person in charge, rejecting that this is to remove responsibility from the system.
As he explained, the application, which will begin to operate gradually next year (it will not have all the possibilities from the start), will also allow alerting, depending on the age group, about the vaccines to be taken, providing a 'link' so that the person can schedule them at the health center.
Another possibility is to send alerts for population-based cancer screenings that have been defined, allowing requests to be issued and indicating the closest locations available to carry out the tests.
“In addition to certainly helping to have greater adherence, it will also improve people's lives in terms of access to prevention”, stated Nuno Marques, explaining that the information will then be transmitted to the Ministry of Health's information systems, “so that everything is recorded ”, even if the person does not have an assigned family doctor.
When asked about data protection issues, he said that they do not arise as it will be the user himself, if he so chooses, who will provide his personal data.
“It's a platform developed for people, not for the system, which is a slightly different paradigm. The person will be the one who will keep all the data,” she said, adding that the application will have communication with healthcare professionals.
The official also highlighted that measures such as this application – which can be used by people over 18 years of age – “can have a great impact on health promotion and, therefore, prevention, later avoiding situations that lead to dependence, identifying disease situations early. as long as they are treatable.”
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