What is Ayu?
- Dr Pallavi Jane Pereira (Unlicensed)
- Karishma Arora (Unlicensed)
Most of the current digital health platforms, use the available technology that incorporates health awareness and evidence-based case management interventions, which allows a remote doctor to provide health care to the people even in far-flung rural communities i.e. at the last mile. Not only does it overcome the distance barriers and improves access to basic medical services, but by being able to continuously monitor its quality, it can provide standardized good quality health care services.
To put in simple terms, Ayu is the conversion of clinical knowledge and methodology into digital protocols for a medical case evaluation and management, by remote users. It has been developed meticulously by physicians at John Hopkins University, USA and Intelehealth. It is a comprehensive clinical document that is being continuously reviewed and updated by Intelehealth, and thus can be customized for different programs and into different languages, as per the client’s needs. Ayu contains guided history taking flowcharts and clinical examinations for 70+ common complaints, 140+ physical examinations and 18+ screening methods.
Ayu is a Comprehensive Clinical Checklist and a sophisticated clinical guide.
It is a powerful knowledge engine that guides the health workers to collect Electronic health records (EHR) in a detailed, evidence-based and systematic manner for both out-patient cases and screening purposes with an eye towards medical relevance of each condition.
It is meticulously developed keeping in mind the need of the health workers to record medical findings of the patient in a clinically correct manner.
It is designed in such a way that it is easy to understand for a health worker who may have little training or formal education.
It contains questions that can be reliably asked by a health worker, in language that is culturally appropriate.
It is created in a simple language, translatable into local languages and can be customized according to the client’s needs.
The protocol asks pertinent questions although not too broad in scope so as to not prolong the patient consultation by irrelevant history-taking.
Thus the overall task of gathering data from the patient is made easy to understand and is prompted by the Hx guide. All this frees up the doctor’s time and decreases his efforts and at the same time giving the doctor an evidence-based data to use.
Thus the Ayu platform is made up of three major types of protocols: