Cooperation between Pharmi, Sint Maartenskliniek and Deloitte
In the Netherlands, 11 million people use medication every day. 30% of the people who leave the pharmacy do not know how to use their medicine properly. Improper medication use leads to a lot of frustration, discomfort and worse; every year almost 50,000 people end up in the hospital unnecessarily, and 1,000 people die. This costs society over 85 million euros.
Start-up Pharmi is joining forces with the Sint Maartenskliniek and Deloitte, for a pilot with a Digital Human "pharmacist." The Digital Human will be used to guide rheumatoid arthritis patients virtually and 24/7 with the correct use of the drug Methotrexate.
What is a Digital Human
The "Digital Human" is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered but lifelike person who can carry on human conversations by seeing, hearing, and understanding. It possesses and simulates, with a friendly voice and facial expressions, the best parts of human interaction - including conversation, communication, and emotion.
As such, the Digital Human can closely mimic the personal and familiar communication with a pharmacist. At the same time, it can be an efficient source of information because spoken text comes across better than the plain text of an entire package insert. This pilot with Pharmi the Digital Human, is a first step toward a new way of providing information to medication users. A future where the patient is in control of safe drug use.
Meet Pharmi - the digital pharmacist
Digital Human Pharmi is going to help rheumatoid arthritis patients with the correct use of the drug Methotrexate through St. Maartens Clinic. As a virtual pharmacist, she is part of Pharmi's existing mobile application. She can answer the most frequently asked questions about the drug. For example, she provides information about side effects, or when to take the drug. Her answers are scientifically validated and formulated in an understandable language level. Her information is based entirely on the already existing data in the Pharmi app. Pharmi refers in its own introduction, to privacy rules and does not ask to leave personal and medical data at this time.
St. Maartens Clinic is testing Pharmi the Digital Human on rheumatoid arthritis patients in its healthcare network. The next step is to ensure that Pharmi will soon be able to provide AI-generated informative answers for all 14,000 unique medications. This automation is necessary to ensure the scale of the number of medications and future package insert changes.
The technology
Underlying the visual aspects of Pharmi, chatbot technology is used. Pharmi and Deloitte specialists are working with UneeQ. This is a scale-up leading the way in the development of the Digital Human platform. This is where Pharmi's facial expressions, appearance and voice are developed.
The health (care) future of the Netherlands
Deloitte wants to play an active role in the health ecosystem and, together with the other parties, strengthen and accelerate the improvements mentioned in this article. We will do this through multiple events: hackathons, round table discussions and C-level dialogues. With the goal of bringing together the various parties in the new health ecosystem, and exploring together what alliances can bring value. We look forward to an interesting journey together, towards the health (care) future of the Netherlands.
Get in touch
Matthijs Boom
We zijn in de Nederland de weg naar digitale zorg ingeslagen. Om de zorg toegankelijk te houden moeten we medewerkers en klanten optimaal faciliteren zodat we zelfstandigheid creëren en tegelijkertijd persoonlijke zorg leveren waar nodig. Als Director Digital Health ben ik samen met mijn team verantwoordelijk om binnen het ecosysteem van gezondheid de sector te transformeren met behulp van digitale technologie in het domein klant en medewerker engagement. Wij werken samen met partners die moderne en betrouwbare oplossingen realiseren als Apple, Salesforce, ServiceNow en Mulesoft.