Building a Healthier Future

Over the past two years, a staggering 67 million children worldwide have missed out on life-saving vaccinations and significant public health challenges are emerging, with vaccination coverage declining in 112 countries. While immunization is crucial in preventing millions of child deaths each year, achieving vaccine equity requires targeting under-vaccinated and unvaccinated children in remote areas to overcome barriers to vaccination. This calls for new technologies and approaches to collect timely and detailed data, and innovations in high-quality data for targeted intervention. 

Recognizing this gap, UNICEF Venture Fund has made seed investments in Portal Telemedicina, a Brazilian company with products for health systems deployed to over 30 million users across Brazil and Africa. Part of the Venture Fund’s 2022 AI and Data Science Cohort, Portal Telemedicina provides a comprehensive platform for teleconsultation, population health management, and telediagnosis, seamlessly integrating medical records and devices.

Through this integration, specialized doctors can conduct remote consultations and diagnoses, while parents and caregivers receive important notifications about essential health services, particularly routine immunizations for their children. The AI module integrated into the platform checks data continuously to detect probabilities of delays in development and notify healthcare professionals. It will also group children by similarity, detecting chronological and geographic trends, helping managers find the best courses of action.

In Brazil, 26 per cent of children remain unvaccinated, and a recent pilot project conducted by Portal Telemedicina in Tarumã is looking at ways to improve these statistics through the development of an Open Source child health management platform. From July to September 2023, the company's solution digitized and compiled existing vaccination data to create a map with red alerts for children with delayed vaccines. The pilot project involved 3,876 children and resulted in a promising initial increase in vaccine coverage from 53 per cent to 56 per cent - a 3 per cent improvement. While these results are still preliminary, they highlight the potential impact of innovating in the arena of data compilation. 

"Portal Telemedicine has a disruptive and revolutionary solution. By using Machine Learning to support the activities of medical analyses, the company achieves up to 10x greater productivity than the conventional process. Google realizes this potential and, for this reason, chose Portal Telemedicine to take part in our global accelerator". 

 

José Papo, Head Google Accelerator Latin America 

Project leader Taciane Vendrusculo is optimistic about the potential impact that innovating with data can have on improving vaccination outcomes for children. "Implementation of this solution alone has prompted public authorities to improve the organization of health information and recognize the importance of registered records in the system," she said. Beyond real-time monitoring of vaccine coverage, Vendrusculo shared that the technology also has great potential for monitoring and evaluation by public health authorities as "this technology allows for quick assessment of the impact of actions such as vaccination campaigns or visits by community healthcare workers to areas with high delay rates."

While one of Portal Telemedicina's standout features lies in its ability to ensure timely access to vital health services through notifications and alerts for parents and caregivers, the solution focused on improving child vaccination rates with the potential to scale impact for public health officials and healthcare professionals alike. With access to real-time, geo-located data, they can make informed decisions using AI-driven insights about the populations and communities they serve. Taruma's Health Secretary, Elvira Alice Gozze da Silva, described the use of the technology developed by Portal Telemedicina as "lifting a blindfold," as it allowed her to see data she previously didn't have access to. 

Ultimately, streamlined and multifaceted approaches such as that of Portal Telemedicina significantly strengthen the efficiency of health systems, narrowing gaps and ensuring accessible healthcare for all children. Getting every child immunized requires a comprehensive approach involving funding, partnerships, and political will.

In collaboration with partners like Takeda Pharmaceutical Limited Company, UNICEF's Venture Fund continues to invest in innovative tech solutions that strengthen localized health systems and address the most pressing global health challenges for children. 

"With Portal Telemedicine, we connected our city to the future of healthcare, transforming Tarumã reality with agile and quality assistance".  

 Oscar Gozzi, Taruma's City Mayor