Taylor Michell & Raymond Li - Jamaica, University Hospital of the West Indies
Taylor and Raymond worked as a team which included a student from the University of Technology, Jamaica on a research project to collect step activity from patients and match it to clinical health data.
Diabetes in Jamaica is found in 12% of the population who are 15 years or older, and it is the leading cause of death of women in Jamaica. The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) working with Dr. Donald Shepard (Professor of Health Economics at Brandeis’ Heller School for Policy and Management), is planning a study to determine whether changes in health status through increased exercise can reduce care costs and complications related to diabetes. On the Incentivized Activity Monitoring in Jamaica (IAMJ) pilot project, the CMU students worked with the UHWI doctors and Professor Shepard to build out the initial infrastructure needed for the study. This includes a website for intake processing of new patients, a dashboard for clinicians to capture and monitor health measures, an automatic step collection process using Fitbit with OAuth2.0, and step collection using Twilio for low-tech study participants. These solutions were developed using UHWI's preferred no-code/low-code solutions (Xano and Appgyver) and will be supported moving forward by the IT applications team at the hospital. The solution was successfully tested with three pilot program participant patients over three weeks during which the students refined the process based on participant feedback and modified the incentive structure to include regular participation, step count and A1C levels. Further studies will increase the number of patients and further automate the incentive payment process.