Everyone deserves a second medical opinion

How do health workers in remote areas access information while serving masses

I was talking to a friend who’s a medical practitioner about the unfairness of life. Don’t get me wrong, we were not whining but rather reflecting on the essence and meaning of living.

Our conversation drifted to a case of a 5-month-old baby who’s very unfortunate to have a liver condition (with severe jaundice) at that age (not that it’s appropriate to have it later in life). 5 months is just too early.

We then talked about the importance of second opinions in regard to medical decisions. Not that the first opinion does not matter, but a second pair of lenses for the same problem normally uncovers a hidden or overlooked detail that many a time completely changes the diagnosis and eventually the remedies administered.

Well, we later moved on to other existential concerns.

But, the conversation lingered on my mind.

This particular patient was in the capital city of Uganda—with access to a national referral hospital and a host of private medical facilities.

What’s the predicament of a patient who’s over 400 kilometres from these facilities?

How are the attending medical practitioners’ knowledge gaps filled in when they do not have a colleague to consult?

Suppose, it’s a nurse in a remote location who has to decide whether to refer the patient to a faraway health facility where the patient’s caretakers cannot afford the associated care costs?

What happens to patients in war-torn areas without a network of doctors, without internet, but faced with an ailing patient whose source of discomfort is elusive?

I live in a country that has one of the highest patient-to-medical-personnel ratios (1:25,000) compared to the universally recommended 1:1,000 ratio. This implies that the moment a medical personnel steps into the facility, they are immediately “swarmed” by patients, which in turn means that they will strive to spend as little time as possible with the patient out of guilt about the other patients waiting outside.

This can be changed (not entirely, I know) but there’s room for improvement.

What is my role?

I am embarking on building a multimodal LLM desktop application that will equip health workers with a bit of “quality of life” improvements. For example,

  • Information in one place instead of scrolling Google
  • Does not need internet all the time (offline-first support)
  • Helps with possible diagnoses once given the symptoms
  • Aids with possible medication to administer
  • Open source and does not require a commercial license to operate
  • Can be improved (with consensus by medical practitioners)