On April 14, the Central American Network of Health Informatics (Recainsa) in collaboration with Elsevier presented an online conference on decision-making on COVID-19 response.
Daniel Otzoy, member of Recainsa, expert in Digital Transformation and Digital Health was the session moderator and on the other hand, was Daniela Naranjo, Elsevier’s Product Sales Manager in Latin America was the expert guest.
At the beginning of the session Otzoy presented a brief summary of the current situation of the pandemic in Latin America, as well as information on frequently asked questions about COVID-19 on Google and data on types of misinformation.
Otzoy also presented the Top 5 most cited Google Scholar sources of objective evidence, with information on COVID-19: WHO, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA Network and National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Subsequently, Daniela Naranjo from Elsevier, which is one of the most important medical publishers and is also defined as an information analysis company, presented a summary of the actions that the company has taken over the past few weeks in relation to the pandemic.
The objective of the online conference was to "Support to establish a COVID-19 support program that ensures the well-being of patients and clinical team".
Naranjo explained that health emergencies lead to an explosion of clinical and epidemiological information and research, which can lead to misinformation. Therefore, the publisher decided to give access to as much content as possible, in relation to COVID-19, aimed at both public health institutions and the general public.
Since March, all content for PubMed and NIHs has been made available, as well as the ability to use data mining and artificial intelligence tools to make the most out of them.
In this way, they have enabled the Information Center on the novel coronavirus, with the 21,000 available articles, with specific sections for researchers, for clinicians and for the general public.
In addition, she explained the COVID-19 Tool Kit center, which, unlike the general information center, this is specifically focused on patient care and aims to generate clinical supports to health professionals treating COVID-19 patients. It allows the health care professional to manage symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and general well-being.
It also offers tools for the different care levels: Ambulatory, urgency, hospital and intensive.
Finally, she explained the elements to build a supporting program for COVID-19, which include four axes:
- Staff education
- Patient education
- Treatment
- Care
As they were exposed, there are various Digital Health resources to avoid clinical misinformation, and to keep health professionals who care for COVID-19 patients informed. The full webinar is available at the following link: https://recainsa.org/webinar-decisiones-basadas-en-evidencia-sobre-covid-19/
