Three doctors have launched a digital solution to help bridge the gap between health literacy and better healthcare. Safe Patient, a WhatsApp bot platform, provides the patient with step-by-step information about pre-surgery medical processes. Dr Pradeep Mistry, a consultant vascular surgeon, president of Vascular Society of Southern Africa (Vassa) and vice-president of the World Federation of Vascular Surgical Societies, has been working alongside Dr Dirk Le Roux, vascular surgeon and immediate past president of Vassa, and Professor Jay Pillai, academic head at the Wits Vascular Unit and Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, to develop the solution.
They said Safe Patient is the first of its kind in the world and is a result of more than two years of research in peer-reviewed publications and the state of health literacy in South Africa. “We’re going to educate people that there is a problem first, and then it empowers people to do something about it. You have to identify the problem for people first before you even give them a solution.
It’s promoting wellness and well-being in our society, our patients and doctors,” Mistry said. Safe Patient provides the patient with information on the advantages, indications, eligibility, care, success, complications, risks and recovery of the operation they will undergo. The patient must read each prompt, and confirm that they understand the information, which will lead them to a consent form.
If the patient does not interact with t.
