Research & development teleconsultation solution optimised to support more effective care delivery to ethnic minority patient groups

该申请由一个数字企业家团队提交，他们在英国工作多年，但来自东欧国家。该团队拥有第一手经验，了解有多少少数民族未能有效地与NHS互动，获得他们所需的护理。语言、文化、实际、经济和缺乏理解往往导致少数族裔得不到他们所需的护理，在许多情况下，他们要么得不到适当的护理，有的则返回家乡获得护理服务。这场流行病加速了网络会议(即FaceTime)在医疗咨询中的使用和接受。DocVictoria认为，同样的方法可以用来为少数民族提供更好的医疗保健服务。DocVictoria开发了一种为医生和患者量身定做的网络会议解决方案。该解决方案实现了医生和患者之间无缝、安全的远程双向通信。然而，这只解决了获得医疗保健方面的部分挑战。DocVictoria拥有的技术可以通过以下方式支持患者与医生的对话：*为各自的用户提供实时屏幕语音到文本的实时翻译。*支持对话的自动化和交互式图形/图像内容(即身体部位、症状体征的自动图像)。*双向增强控制，使远程用户能够描述他们症状的位置、方向和细微方面。DocVictoria正在寻求快速启动创新资金，使团队能够与一群少数民族患者/用户一起研究这些功能的可行性。这一试点项目将使团队能够了解两个特定患者群体的需求。然后，他们将在现有平台上开发上述附加组件，并通过一项小型研究，评估该解决方案对远程患者用户的益处和易用性。如果被证明是成功的，那么该团队将能够确保所需的大规模投资，以资助该应用程序在临床实践(即全科医生手术)的全面开发和测试。

The application is presented by a team of digital entrepreneurs who have worked in the UK for many years but originate from Eastern European states. The team has first-hand experience of how many ethnic minorities fail to interact effectively with the NHS to get the care they need. Language, cultural, practical, economic and lack of understanding often result in ethnic minorities failing to get the care they need and in many cases, they either fail to receive appropriate care and some travel back to their home states to access care services. The pandemic has accelerated the use and acceptance of web conferencing (i.e. facetime) in medical consultation. Doctoria believe the same approach can be used to provide ethnic minorities with improved access to healthcare. Doctoria has developed a web conferencing solution that is tailored for use by doctors and patients. The solution enables seamless and secure remote two-way communication between the doctor and patient. However, this only addresses part of the access to healthcare challenges. Doctoria has access to technologies that would make it possible to support the patient-doctor conversation with:* A real-time live on-screen speech-to-text translation to the respective user.* Automated and interactive graphical/image content to support the conversation (i.e. automatic images of body parts, symptom signs) to aid dialogue.* Two-way augmented controls to enable the remote user to describe locations, directions and subtle aspects of their symptoms.Doctoria is seeking Fast Start Innovation funding to enable the team to investigate the feasibility of these features with a volunteer group of ethnic minority patients/users. This pilot project will enable the team to understand the needs of two specific patient groups. They will then develop the above-mentioned add-ons to their existing platform and, through a small study, assess how beneficial and easy to use the solution will be for the remote patient user. If proven to be successful, the team will then be in a position to sure large-scale investment needed to fund the full development and testing of the application in clinical practice (i.e. GP surgeries).