The last two years have been particularly busy for the young telemedicine firm Akinox, which has in turn developed the web platform to direct people who had symptoms of COVID-19 to screening centers, then another to carry out the tracing of cases and collecting on a daily basis, in real time, the evolution of their number, and finally that of generating the QR codes of all vaccinated citizens and providing them with proof of immunization.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
“We have demonstrated that it is possible to manage data on an optimal basis, we must now sustain the technological achievements of COVID”, underlines Alexander Dahl, CEO and founder of Akinox, the company which won in last November the e-solution of the year award from the Ministry of Health and Social Services as part of the health informatics symposium for its applications VaxiCode and VaxiCode Verif.
Akinox had existed since 2010 and had developed a platform for automating digital health processes that was used in several telemedicine projects, notably at the University Hospital Center (CHU) Sainte-Justine and the Integrated University Health Network (RUIS) McGill, when she was requested on March 15, 2020 by the government to create a referral platform for screening cases of COVID-19.
We received a call from the government, who knew what we were doing and who asked us. In three days, we set up an online questionnaire to allow Clic Santé to make appointments for screening.
Alexander Dahl, CEO and Founder of Akinox
“We made our cloud infrastructure available to the internet domain of the Ministry of Health. Then, we developed a platform to carry out case tracing which served more than 7,500 public health users, mainly regional health agencies, ”summarizes Alexander Dahl.
That’s not counting the 900,000 people who followed up on contacts with people who had COVID-19, the 9.2 million screening self-assessment questionnaires and the 12 million laboratory test results that been processed by the Akinox platform.
By making it possible to carry out work remotely and to replace the fax machine with digital data, the platform has saved the equivalent of 700 person-years, underlines its CEO.
QR code management
The digital platform VaxiCode d’Akinox has also made it possible to deliver no less than 12 million QR codes to the entire vaccinated population of Quebec, codes that have resulted in proof of vaccination valid for Quebec and abroad.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Akinox is behind the apps VaxiCode and VaxiCode Verif.
“We were ahead of several other jurisdictions. We were the first vaccine platform in North America that could recognize evidence from abroad, including 46 European countries. Our platform has also been used in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland,” says Alexander Dahl.
Akinox, which had around ten employees in March 2020, now has nearly 90 professionals – clinicians, programmers, security specialists, project management, business development…
“We have put in place a secure platform that protects personal data, a universal device recognized by the authorities both in Canada and abroad,” observes the CEO.
Even if VaxiCode is currently in hibernation, the use of modern standards for the management of health records is convincing and should now serve as a model for the future, believes the CEO.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Alexander Dahl, CEO and Founder of Akinox
Our telemedicine solutions for remote regions that we developed before COVID have improved the quality of care in the regions by 98%.
Alexander Dahl, CEO and Founder of Akinox
“Rather than sending a patient from Nunavut to meet a specialist in Montreal or Quebec, it is his family doctor who obtains a diagnosis in two days from a remote consultation he will have made with this specialist. This process re-engineering also allows the family doctor to benefit from continuous training,” explains Alexander Dahl.
According to the CEO, citing a study by the Journal of Medical Informaticsremote consultation can reduce patient travel from one region to major centers by 40%, which reduces travel, waiting times, costs and congestion in hospitals.
The sustainability of technological achievements
The technological solutions that have made it possible to better manage the magnitude of the different waves of the pandemic must now serve as a springboard for the overhaul of the health system so desired by Minister Christian Dubé, believes Alexander Dahl.
“We are here to allow the implementation of the virtual health record. We could quickly, at first, transfer the paper vaccination record to an electronic record.
“We can also tackle the implementation of a health portal and allow the large-scale adoption of the Quebec Health Booklet. Currently, there are only 400,000 people in Quebec who are registered in this program, whereas we have just vaccinated 7.6 million people.
“And we must also allow citizens to have access to their files. When you take out health insurance, your insurer has access to your entire file, but you, as a patient, do not have access to it. We can do it, ”proposes the CEO of Akinox.
According to Alexander Dahl, whom I met on the sidelines of a symposium on the performance and enhancement of health data, the entire public health system will benefit from greater process automation.
“We need to bring care closer to patients rather than patients to care. Ideally, a patient-centered hospital would be a patientless hospital…”