Accessibility to medical services in the islands: how about digital humans? - 15/08/2049

Given the geography of our country, providing all our citizens the same access to public services has always been a challenge. Whether for education, administrative facilities and of course public health, the government is always struggling to find the “x" that will solve the equation: equal access, cost maintenance, availability of infrastructure…

Of course, the development of high-speed internet in the islands has helped to facilitate these issues. But while the internet has been available as early as 2010, its distribution, quality and cost have remained significant obstacles for remote island citizens to access all types of services.

On this, the operators in charge of this deployment have never been at the forefront of innovative solutions, whether from a technical point of view as well as economic and financial.

Same for infrastructures!

But beyond that, the accessibility of our citizens from the remote islands to public services was also hampered by the lack of development, within the administration, of tools adapted to this technological evolution.

"E-administration" as it was sometimes called, has never been really designed in an innovative and original way, in any case adapted to our island context and no coherent strategy has been proposed.

As for medicine, telemedicine was the persistent wish for all governments who praised its merits & benefits for years without proposing solutions.

It is ultimately a New Zealand idea that is now trying to solve this problem. Indeed, the company Soul Machines recently contacted the local government to propose the commissioning of its "digital doctors".

Designed on the basis of the "digital brain" created by this same company, the objective of this partnership would be to put in service "digital doctors", real human beings artificial, accessible by Internet and equipped with an artificial intelligence device in deep-learning and proto / quasi-human interactions.

The aim would be to make it easier for islanders to have a diagnosis without having to set up a clinic in every village.

The "digital doctor" would be available on a digital platform available in town halls and open access for the population.

It’s yet to be seen how the population of the islands will react. Because, in fact, the company Soul Machines has often encountered, on previous projects, a rejection of the device by the end users. Not for lack of ergonomics, or even technical skills. Digital doctors are indeed very good analysts.

The problem was posed by the acceptability of the underprivileged populations (socially and geographically) who took these devices for "ersatz" doctors, considering that it was not fair that the favored populations always benefit from the human exchange, still seen as better by a lot of people.

The first digital doctors will be deployed in test in the coming months by the government in 3 islands "laboratories". They will be available for 6 months before a possible widespread deployment in the course of next year.