Mission
POC-IT

POC-IT’s mission is to provide an integrated health care network for developing countries to combat limitations in resources, access to providers, and healthcare expertise, all of which have harmful, yet preventable, impacts on patient outcomes.

Pre-Operative

Health care providers may use POC-IT to track pre-operative patient visits. POC-IT was designed with established healthcare questions using multiple choice responses allowing for streamlined, high-quality medical documentation. Using POC-IT for medical record keeping and patient care tracking also allows for medical expertise assistance by serving as a medical checklist with questions representing standard of care.

Operative

POC-IT was designed to provide aid to health care providers in low-resource settings. Often this includes settings in which providers may be limited in not only medical supplies, but also medical expertise. With the field of TeleMedicine ever more popular, POC-IT aims to further its contribution to better health outcomes by including a modality that makes medical knowledge more accessible. The goal of this attribute of POC-IT is to include quality care instructions to surgeons written in simple language. These instructions would be written by leading specialists in those procedures/medical decision-making practices and will follow POC-IT’s clear language style and mission.

Post-Operative

POC-IT’s largest implementations have been designed towards improving post-operative patient care and outcomes. Health care providers can begin using “post-surgical” recordkeeping question sets as early as the patient’s first post-operative evaluation. These recordkeeping question sets stay consistent allowing for analysis of a patient’s health, as well as health across populations. It is well known that most surgical complications develop within the first 24-48 hours after a procedure. These patients often require more frequent re-evaluations, the process of which can quickly become burdensome in low-resource settings often with one “nurse-aid” being responsible for more than 30 patients. It is also well known that the longer a patient stays in a hospital, the higher their chances are to develop an infection; frequently with a drug-resistant pathogen due to the consistent antibacterial use in medical facilities. Finally, as most people live a few hours from their nearest health facility, it is typically a difficult decision to send patients home too early, as well as to prompt patients to return to the medical center.

Solution
Stage I

POC-IT allows for providers to track post-operative health data in a streamlined, high-quality way. From there, POC-IT signals providers if a patient is without complications and can go home (green category). This allows the nurses in healthcare facilities to have more time for patients who need more attention. POC-IT also highlights patients who are experiencing a few symptoms (yellow category) and those with more symptoms (red category).

Solution
Stage II

POC-IT will train a well established samaritan in every town within a region and provide them with a smartphone to use POC-IT. These trusted samaritans can be faith leaders, local business owners, or local health care providers. They are expected to be available for at least a few hours a day where recently discharged patients can come for daily re-evaluations on their way through the town for work or other activities of daily living. Towns set-up in this network will be known as “POC-ITs”.

Solution
Stage III

Every daily re-evaluation will be associated with the completion of a recordkeeping question form through the mobile app by the POC-IT’s trained samaritan. On completion of the form: i) the patient and trained samaritan will be notified about recommendations on next steps in care (whether to return to the medical center or continue home care); ii) the POC-IT database will be updated with the information; and iii) the primary care provider will have the data updated in their “medical record” access on the www.POC-IT.me website.

Impact

POC-IT allows for: i) a medical recordkeeping service that is accessible, streamlined, and protected; ii) health care providers to be more efficient in the medical center; iii) health care providers to have access to clarified medical expertise documentation; iv) patients to return home to their families and employment sooner; v) re-evaluations that would cost the patient a fraction of the typical price of a day in the hospital; vi) increased job opportunities for the local community; vii) and an increased integration of not only communities, but patients to their care.