Tag: patient interaction

Building a Patient-centric Healthcare Ecosystem in SA: A Bold New Vision

Bada Pharasi, CEO of The Innovative Pharmaceutical Association of South Africa (IPASA)

Imagine a healthcare system which ensures that every patient’s voice helps shape their treatment, where barriers to life-saving care are dismantled, and where innovation is driven by meaningful collaboration. In South Africa, this vision is no longer a distant aspiration; it’s an urgent mission to create a system that truly serves its people, writes Bada Pharasi, CEO of the Innovative Pharmaceutical Association of South Africa.

South Africa’s healthcare system stands at a critical crossroads. Despite remarkable medical advancements, countless patients remain on the sidelines, hindered by financial, regulatory, and logistical barriers. Today, there’s an opportunity to reshape this reality by building a patient-centred healthcare model that expands access, amplifies patient voices, and creates strategic partnerships.

Empowering patient voices

In a truly inclusive healthcare system, patients aren’t just recipients of care; they are active contributors. By integrating patient perspectives into decision-making, healthcare becomes more responsive to those it serves. 

Through collaborations with patient advocacy groups, educational campaigns, and year-round initiatives, there’s a growing movement to create an environment in which patients feel heard and empowered to influence the care they receive. While events such as World Patient Safety Day help highlight the importance of prioritising patient needs, the goal is to make this a constant focus, not just an annual observance.

Key prerequisites for achieving this are efficient regulatory frameworks, impactful public-private partnerships, rare disease management, and a true commitment to innovation. 

Streamlined regulatory partnerships

Timely access to groundbreaking treatments depends on efficient regulatory frameworks. Collaborating closely with regulatory authorities such as the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) is pivotal in expediting access to new therapies. 

Such partnerships ensure that treatments meet rigorous safety standards while streamlining approval processes so that life-changing therapies reach patients without unnecessary delays. Maintaining high standards for post-market safety also strengthens public trust and reinforces the resilience of the healthcare system.

Public-private partnerships: Catalysts for innovation

Expanding access to quality healthcare in South Africa demands strong public-private partnerships (PPPs) that leverage both public resources and private sector innovation. 

Collaborative efforts with the Department of Health and other key stakeholders maximise impact by ensuring that resources are effectively allocated and that patients benefit from the latest treatments. These alliances are vital for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) under the National Health Insurance (NHI) framework, helping to ensure that equitable, high-quality healthcare becomes a reality for all.

Closing gaps in rare disease management

For patients with rare diseases, access to treatment is often riddled with obstacles, from limited therapies and high costs to a lack of awareness. Multi-stakeholder collaborations, including advisory boards initiated by organisations such as Rare Diseases South Africa, bring together patients, healthcare professionals, and industry experts to advocate for better support and access to treatments. 

This prioritisation of open communication and patient-centred outcomes offers hope to rare disease patients who, through these partnerships, gain better access to essential treatments and the support they deserve.

Breaking down barriers to innovation

The drive for a more accessible healthcare system also requires addressing policy barriers. Streamlined processes, simpler registration pathways for new drugs, and patient-centred reimbursement policies ensure that patients receive the right treatment at the right time. 

Working alongside policymakers, healthcare providers, and civil society, a concerted effort is being made to create a system in which innovation and equity go hand-in-hand to provide better outcomes and quality of life for all South Africans.

Shaping the future of healthcare

The future of South Africa’s healthcare lies in a system that prioritises patients, breaks down barriers, and capitalises on partnerships to make innovation accessible. 

The call to action is clear: build a healthcare ecosystem that is dynamic, inclusive, and adaptable to ensure that every South African has access to the care they need. By promoting patient voices and ensuring collaboration across sectors, we can transform South Africa’s healthcare system to be more responsive, resilient, and equitable – a system that truly serves its people.

New Medical Emoji Urged for Patient Communication

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

Emoji, those colourful symbols we use in WhatsApp and other communication applications, could be a valuable medical tool which lets patients better communicate symptoms, concerns, and other clinically relevant information, researchers argue.

In a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, senior author Shuhan He, MD, an emergency department attending, advises that each medical discipline start to come up with its own unique set of iconography for official adoption and incorporation into everyday practice.

“The need to listen to patients is at the core of our mission as physicians, and the use of emoji is a great opportunity to take communication to another level,” said Dr He. “Emoji could be particularly important in treating children with still-developing language skills, people with disabilities that impair their ability to communicate, and the many patients who speak a different language.”

While around 3500 emoji are currently within the domain of the Unicode Consortium – the nonprofit organisation that maintains text standards across computers – only about 45 emoji can be considered relevant to medicine. The first, introduced in 2015, were the syringe and the pill. Apple added emoji in 2017 to represent people with disabilities, followed by symbols of the stethoscope, bone, tooth and microbe in 2019. He was co-creator of the anatomical heart and the lung emoji introduced globally in 2020 and is now working with colleagues, as well as with a wide range of medical societies and organisations to advocate for an additional 15 medically related emoji.

“It’s tempting to dismiss emoji as a millennial fad, but they possess the power of standardisation, universality and familiarity, and in the hands of physicians and other health care providers could represent a new and highly effective way to communicate pictorially with patients,” said Dr He. In emergency medical settings where time is critical, emoji could lead to a point-and-tap form of communication that could facilitate important clinical decisions, he adds. The tiny graphic symbols which now span all digital platforms – from mobile to tablet to desktop – could also have utility as annotations to hospital discharge instructions, which are often confusing if not incomprehensible to some patients.

The recent surge of telemedicine presents a great opportunity for medical emojis. It is well suited for patients visually conveying to healthcare providers the intensity of pain they have experienced over time, and for those providers to incorporate it into digital health records.

His research is on emoji to help patients and doctors communicate common symptoms – such as mobility, mood, and duration and quality of pain – that are associated with various diseases and conditions. “It’s clear that emoji have become part of the global, mainstream conversation, and that medical societies and physician committees and organisations need to take them seriously,” said Dr He. “Which means they should be determining now which emoji would best serve the interests of their patients, building consensus around the medical accuracy of these emoji, then working to get them approved through the global standard-setting body and working through the long adaptation and implementation process.”

Source: EurekAlert!