A Universal-Use Medical Tool Awaiting Recognition

"Every eight-year-old in Kenya knew how to text. I loved the lab [he worked with as an infectious disease specialist], but at the same time we were exposed to the real world at the HIV-AIDS clinic in Nairobi. As treatment for patients was being rolled out, I started thinking, how can we use mobile phones to help patient care?"
"We knew we had a solution ready to go, one that has worked, and that has been built on years of working with patients on the front lines."
"We have published more and done more research on texting with patients -- including early pandemics -- than anyone in the world, and the slowness in the system here [in Canada, during the global pandemic] has been frustrating."
"A lot of companies are jumping in, some with really good ideas. But we should have a better process at looking at what work has already been done. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why not start with a round wheel, and see how we can improve upon it?"
Dr.Richard Lester, infectious disease specialist, associate professor, University of British Columbia medical school

Dr. Richard Lester in Kenya. Gabby Serafini

While living in Kenya, working to help the local medical community cope with the growing problem of HIV-AIDS, in a nation whose society and culture stigmatized the virus as a hopeless journey to death, Dr.Lester collaborated with patients and with health care workers in an effort to elicit working ideas that if synthesized with technology, one familiar to most Kenyans, the work of following up on patient status and their care could be advanced.

Example of contact-texting in COVID-19. NP photo 

In time, study and analysis of the situation and the useful opinions led to a plan which consisted of nurses texting patients weekly with a query of how they were managing, to elicit a response from the patient that would inform health care whether the patient needed assistance and follow-up. Should a problem emerge, a nurse would determine through a series of texts what might be going awry, offering recommendations for improvement.

Dr.Lester proceeded to publish a research paper, since heavily cited, and out of the experience became a global authority on digital health. He and his wife co-founded a two-way texting patient-care platform, they named WelTel, one that has been used in British Columbia where they now live, to support tuberculosis patients, as well as mothers living with HIV, children with serious cardiac issues, and to aid people living in remote communities on Haida Gwaii.

The governments of both Rwanda and Uganda have adopted the system as a health aid.

And in the United Kingdom WelTel is being used as a frontline contact for the purpose of tracing and supporting patients during this time of COVID-19.

To date however, frustratingly, no Canadian jurisdiction has taken up the new technological tool with its proven record and its backup support by the specialist who invented the system. This, despite his having been awarded $500,000 in federal grant funding to advance the usefulness of the platform, in response to his having put together a successful grant proposal to the federal government.