X Close

Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing Blog

Home

Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing

Menu

Nurse navigators and WhatsApp: an example of ‘smart from below’

By Alfonso Otaegui, on 8 December 2018

Photo by Alfonso Otaegui

Within the scope of the project Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA), we are committed to work collaboratively with a local mHealth initiative, or any initiative that will improve the access to healthcare or the wellbeing of the populations among whom we are carrying our fieldwork.

At the beginning, before even starting my fieldwork, I envisioned this initiative as the creation and implementation of a bespoke mHealth app, which would respond to a necessity observed in the field. This approach implied spotting a gap in the site –a need not yet addressed but noticed by the ethnographer– and creating an app which would fill that gap. It was certainly a top-down implementation approach: I would give the users something they needed but were not aware they needed.

After a couple of months, I realized it would be wiser to simply describe an app people already used in a creative way, and bring this local idea to another place, where this idea could be helpful. This approach, which could be described as ‘bottom-up’, implies acknowledging the creativity of local populations in the adoption of communication technologies, what Pype (2017) names ‘smartness from below’. With the same aim of bringing good ideas from one place to another, we have also started in our team to build up a list of ‘best practices’ in healthcare throughout all of our field sites.

With this aim in mind, I will spend the last six months of my fieldwork in Santiago doing ethnography at an oncological center in a public hospital. This particular hospital is the only public one in Santiago having implemented a ‘nurse navigator’ model of healthcare (Devine 2017).

The navigator nurses work as mediators between oncological patients and the medical and bureaucratical system of a public hospital in a low-income area. Cancer treatments mean two complexities for the patient: the medical complexity of the treatment and the bureaucracy of the public health system. Different cancer treatments can have several effects on different systems of the body, so managing the treatment implies handling a lot of information. The treatment is based on a series of procedures (image exams, chemotherapy sessions, blood tests, etc.) which require prescriptions and appointments, and have to be carried out in a specific order, and in certain amount of time (otherwise the probabilities of success decline). Navigator nurses actually manage the treatment for the patient, as they have the expertise to deal with both kind of complexities.

According to oncologist Bruno Nervi, president of the foundation Chile sin Cancer (‘Chile without cancer’), there are around 100 oncologists in Chile, when 400 are needed (55.000 people are diagnosed with cancer every year) (‘La Fundación Chile sin cáncer (…)’ 2018). Given the high number of patients, oncologists do not have the time to explain all the details of the treatment. The nurses working at the chemotherapy room face the same problem, as they try to fit in as many patients on a day as possible. The nurse navigators then, fill in this gap by educating the patient on the details of the disease and its treatment and mediate between the patient and the complex bureaucratical system of public healthcare in Chile. They make all the appointments for exams, blood tests and the like –which requires a lot of paperwork– and stay in touch with patient in case this has any doubt or question. These dedicated nurses constitute a human factor in healthcare that no app can replace. The nurse navigators, however, do use an app that is the most commonly used messaging app amongst patients: WhatsApp. According to the navigator nurses, WhatsApp gives them the chance to use various means of communication depending on the particularities and necessities of every patient: some prefer a phone call, some other need to see the info written in a text message, other will be reassured if they see a picture of the prescription or an exam order, some need an audio message they can listen to several times in order to understand the meaning (most of the patients are low-income people with low levels of education). Besides, nurse navigators are available for the patients for any doubt or question they might have. These nurses are there for them, to answer their questions and to comfort them, as the treatment and this relation of distant care can last for years.

Daniel Miller, principal investigator of the ASSA project, recommended in his last book ‘The Comfort of People’ on hospice patients and the use of new media, that it would important to create a patient/carer charter of new media use (2017: 218). The usage of WhatsApp by these nurse navigators actually follows a protocol which developed out of their experience in the last couple of years. I will attempt to describe this protocol and app usage and build up a model. I really hope it will be possible to bring this locally developed good idea to other public hospitals in Chile.

References

Devine, A. (2017, April 3). The Nurse Navigator: A Patient’s Compass On The Healthcare Journey. Retrieved from https://nurse.org/articles/nurse-navigator-career-path-salary-job-description/
La Fundación Chile sin cáncer y su contribución para cambiar la historia del cáncer en Chile. (2018, October 15). Retrieved from https://www.uc.cl/es/la-universidad/noticias/31765-la-fundacion-chilesincancer-y-su-contribucion-para-cambiar-la-historia-del-cancer-en-chile
Miller, D. (2017). The Comfort of People. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Pype, K. (2017). Smartness from Below: Variations on Technology and Creativity in Contemporary Kinshasa. In C. C. Mavhunga (Ed.), What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? (pp. 97–115). Cambridge, Massachussetts: The MIT Press.

The place of WhatsApp in the ecology of care

By Marilia Duque E S, on 26 August 2018

Author: Marilia Duque

Dr. Gusso uses WhatsApp Business at Amparo Health Clinic (Photo: Marilia Duque)

In 2015 a PwC research report suggested that the Brazilian m-health market would reach $ 46.6 million while a GSMA report forecasted that 45.7 million Brazilians would benefit from mobile health projects (see here). In 2017 the scenario was even more optimistic. According to Statista, Brazil was expected to become the largest m-health market in Latin America with revenues of around $ 0.7 billion. These numbers explain the impressive amount of m-Heath startups and startup Incubators I’ve seen in Sao Paulo (see Eretz.bio, for example). But they don’t explain why after 7 months of fieldwork I still couldn’t find the people who are actually using these m-health apps. Instead, I found an intensive use of WhatsApp among my informants, filling the gaps in communication and making a huge impact on the ecology of care which we address in this project.

For example, every day early in the morning, Ms. M (54) sends a good morning message through WhatsApp to four lady-friends older than her. “It is like volunteer work because I know they are lonely and that message will make them happy and socially connected”, she explained. Ms. D (66) also starts her day sending a WhatsApp message. But in her case, the message is sent to her only daughter who lives in France, as a sign that she spent the night well. She is supposed to send this message every day before 10am otherwise her daughter will call a friend to check on her. “Some people say my daughter abandoned me, but the truth is that she is closer than many of my friends’ children who just live nearby”.

That is the same in the case of Dr. J., a physician who works in Sao Paulo and uses WhatsApp to take care of his 93 year-old father. After having a stroke, his father moved to Dr. J. brother’s house located two hours away.  Dr. J. created a WhatsApp group to talk to his brother and to his father’s caregiver. He gives her all the instructions she needs, and she updates him with information such as what his father ate, how he slept, how much water he drank, how much he exercised and how he was feeling. After a few months, he could tell how improved his father was and he explained how WhatsApp helped him and his family to feel safe and engaged.

Dr. K. also uses WhatsApp to provide care at distance. He works in my field site as a generalist providing ambulatory care to old people. WhatsApp allows him to give orientation about what to do when patients don’t feel well, and he can also ask them to go to his office if necessary. In many cases, he said, he can solve problems providing only care at distance. Dr. K. believes that the simple fact that the patients know they can use WhatsApp to contact him makes them feel safe and comfortable.

WhatsApp is also helping clinics to manage people’s health. Amparo Health, for example, is a clinic that uses WhatsApp Business to connect patients to doctors. The patient pays a monthly fee to have access to low-cost exams and to specialists like ophthalmologists, gynecologists, dermatologists, nutritionists and psychologists. What is new here is that all procedures and exams are coordinated by a generalist, who is available on WhatsApp. Dr. Gusso, the head physician at Amparo Health, explains that because the clinic business model is based on membership, they have no interest in demanding unnecessary exams or appointments. Doctors are paid by the hour and not by performance and that includes time to answer WhatsApp messages during the morning and afternoon. At the end of the day, he said, they are using WhatsApp to provide care at a distance, helping people to stay healthy, to feel safe and to save money. Prevent Senior, a health insurance company, also uses WhatsApp to make patients’ lives easier. In cases where treatments require on-going medication, patients can use WhatsApp to ask for new prescriptions. They can receive their prescriptions at home or they can go to the doctor office to get them, but with no need to schedule an appointment.

WhatsApp is the primary method of communication for 96% of Brazilians with access to smartphones. And among my informants older than 60 years old, that is also the app they use the most. Now imagine what can be achieved if WhatsApp features are explored to make the communication between health insurance companies, doctors, patients, caregivers, family and friends healthier too.