Development of a Mobile Application for Peer-to-Peer Physician Consultations in the War Setting in Ukraine
Ali Dzhemiliev*1, Svitlana Bielichenko2, Darya Kizub3, Galyna Shabat4, Inesa Huivaniuk5, Solomiia Semeniv7, Olha Lutsiv6, Vanessa Welten1, Nelya Melnitchouk1
1Surgery, Brigham and Women`s Hospital, Boston, MA; 2Massachusets General Hospital, Boston, MA; 3Hematology Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Huston, TX; 4Merano Hospital, Merano, Italy; 5National Cancer Institute, Kyiv, Ukraine; 6University of Alberta, Alberta, AB, Canada; 7Krakow Hospital, Krakow, Poland
Objective. Since 24th February 2022, Russia attacked and destroyed approximately 1000 medical facilities in Ukraine. Russia's invasion of Ukraine resulted in weakened and under-resourced healthcare system, displacement of patients and physicians, acuity of medical problems and challenges with management of the patients. In order to improve care of patients in Ukraine, we created a mobile application "HealUA" to connect physicians in Ukraine with each other and experts worldwide for peer-to-peer consultations and evaluated its feasibility.
Design. HealUA application was created based on the need of internally displaced Ukrainian physicians and pilot-tested among 10 users. The application allows for a physician, verified at registration, to submit a case without patient-identifying information, and request advice from other physicians also registered on the app. HealUA supports both Ukrainian and English, as well as image/file attachments. The first version was released on May 17, 2022 via the App Store/Play Market free of charge. HealUA was disseminated through social media and physician champions. The updated version (released on 23rd March 2023) allows translations of submitted cases by our translators from Ukrainian to English and vice versa.
Setting. HealUA application on App store/Play Market.
Patients (or Other Participants). Physicians from Ukraine and worldwide.
Main Outcome Measure (s). We looked at the number of users, the number of submitted cases, as well as the turnaround time of receiving recommendations in response tosubmitted cases.
Results. From May 2022 to February 2023, 2050 physicians joined HealUA. 96% users were from Ukraine and 4% from other countries. There were 27.46% internal medicine, family medicine and pediatricians; 17.95% anesthesiologists; 12% surgeons; 7.80% Ob/Gyn; 7,75% neurologists, 4.29% dermatologists; 3.80% oncologists and 18.95% other sub-specialists. 97 cases were submitted (88-Ukrainian, 9-English) and 97.93% received responses. 86.31% of responses were received within the 1st day, 5.26% between 1-2 days, and 8.42% between 3-24 days after case submission. Specialties consulted included dermatology (n=19), internal medicine (n=13), surgery (n=11), pediatrics (n=11) oncology (n=7), other (n=36).
Conclusions. HealUA is a promising platform for improving access to subspecialty consultation in Ukraine during armed conflict. Additional efforts needed to disseminate the application and encourage user engagement.
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