Samah Ghalloussi, one of the entrepreneurs interviewed for the article with a worker of the French Red Cross. Credit: French Red Cross

By Angel Mendoza
PARIS, Apr 19 2021 (IPS)

This year’s World Health Day on 7 April was an opportunity for three entrepreneurs to share their insights and reflections on a rather complex year due to the health crisis and comment on their experiences developing impactful products and services in this sector.

Emeric Lemaire, co-founder of Arkhn, Samah Ghallousi, CEO of AALIA.tech and Antoine Noel, co-founder and director of Japet, are all either associates of Liberté Living-Lab, (a tech for good innovation space hosting a multi-actor collective) or members of Tekhné, a start-up acceleration programme.

The annual World Health Days help to raise public awareness of a wide range of topics, and thus provide an opportunity to highlight three health issues, whether they concern professionals or the general public: medical data management, inclusion in the health sector, or the challenges of back health.

The health crisis has highlighted the problems of accessing and managing data in the health system. Some of the most striking examples of these problems include the poor management of the number of patients attending emergency rooms, limited access to medical history and therefore the risk factors linked to patients, as well as the recent administration of vaccines.

Emeric Lemaire, co-founder of Arkhn, whose mission is to enable more efficient and ethical access to hospital data, shares some lessons learned during this pandemic.

“Even if the past year has been very hard for our society because of the health crisis, there are some positive realizations for the future of the health system. In particular, some governments have taken measures to increase the resilience of hospitals, including investment in research and in their information systems: this is one of the main missions of the Segur (consultation of French healthcare system stakeholders), ” said Emeric.

According to Emeric, proper data management would help to better control the Covid-19 pandemic. Firstly, because access to medical information is vital for understanding the Covid-19 virus and the development of treatments/vaccines.

Secondly, this would greatly benefit research, which requires rapid data access in order to recruit patients for clinical trials.

Finally, from an organisational point of view, efficient and accessible data management allows for better monitoring of bed distribution and the construction of efficient propagation models.

Credit: French Red Cross & Aalia tech

Despite the pandemic, Arkhn has grown and is now supporting around ten hospitals. The teams are developing a digital platform that facilitates access to all the data collected in health care institutions.

They are deploying a standard data warehouse in each health care institution which is accessible through a universal interface (an API – Application Programming Interface – using the FHIR standard, an international reference for medical IT). This centralises data from existing software, which is difficult to access at present.

Enabling data access in this way has a number of advantages namely for research purposes (setting up cohorts, conducting clinical research), for improving the capacity of care teams and maximising their efficiency (monitoring patients’ progress, rapidly searching for medical information) and also for promoting the shared access of the data by the hospital’s partners (software publishers, pharmaceutical companies, etc.).

This year’s challenges? “To learn the lessons of this health crisis in order to build a health system more efficient for everyone and better able to respond to such pandemics.”

For Samah Ghallousi, Managing Director of AALIA.tech, there remains a major challenge in health care: inclusion. A real public health problem exists, on which AALIA.tech is working, which involves accessibility through language.

During the pandemic in France, an issue transpired whereby a whole population that did not speak French well enough struggled to understand prevention messages and even access health care.

“There are already often basic communication problems between doctors and patients, which means that some patients do not always understand their treatments and how to take them correctly. When a patient does not speak French or does not speak it well, the problem is even more complex.”

“If we are unable to translate messages into their own language, they will be less likely to manage their health correctly, which could lead to their condition becoming more aggravated or even worsened without the proper care and attention.” said Samah

AALIA.tech has therefore launched its product, currently in beta testing, to help emergency services by offering a voice assistant via an application that translates the health professional’s questions into the patient’s native language.

This technology takes into account the medical and cultural context of the patient, and allows for a fine-tuned understanding by not restricting the doctor to a list of questions, and not limiting them to a pre-established artificial language. The assistant has also been developed into an audio version to also help those who cannot read.

Back problems, common among workers, are even more likely to develop among the large number of home-based workers, who are often poorly equipped at home for extended periods of sitting. According to the medical journal The Lancet, an estimated 540 million people worldwide are affected by lower-back pain.

“The annual cost of back pain is more than €1.4 billion each year for the social security system. It is therefore essential to find solutions for people who suffer chronically from back pain as they represent 80% of the expenses. It is also essential to take preventative action to avoid entering this vicious circle,” said Antoine, co-founder and director of Japet.

One of the main themes of the last World Health Day is the “Mobilisation of all public health actors”, especially those who are not necessarily considered. According to Antoine, the mobilisation of companies is essential, as many risk factors are linked to professional activity.

To combat musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), Japet has designed exoskeletons for the labour market. This “Wearable Medicine” is defined as the combination of medical science and modern robotics.

The start-up markets its exoskeletons in France, Germany, South Korea and Hong Kong, and this year Japet intends to multiply its partnerships in Italy, as well as in several Asian and South American countries.

In addition, in the specific context of the epidemic, Japet is one of the many players who have mobilised. In 2020 they joined the French Red Cross accelerator to promote the integration of new occupational health solutions, and in particular to help staff working on the front line against the pandemic.

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Credit: Sarawak Biodiversity Centre

By Angel Mendoza
PARIS, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

The voices of indigenous people worldwide are being silenced and their lives made invisible. Stewards of the earth, they are left at the fringes of public discourse in countries around the globe. Indigenous people are not “extinct”, they exist, and they are building innovative networks and solutions, that could be the key to many of our world’s problems.

From the Chepang indigenous peoples in Nepal being evicted from their ancestral lands, to the killing of indigenous leaders in Colombia, native communities continue to be victims of attacks, yet they are also building powerful movements, fighting for access to land, education and autonomy.

“There’s no democracy in the world without the respect and defence of indigenous people. The diversity of human beings and nature is our wealth,” says Iara Pietricovsky, Chair of Forus International, a global network of civil society organisations.

According to the World Bank, there are approximately 476 million Indigenous Peoples worldwide, in over 90 countries. They represent over 6% of the global population, yet their voices in state’s decision making and the media remain silenced. The Covid-19 pandemic has become a further threat that indigenous communities are facing as it spreads in their vulnerable regions, infecting thousands.

New challenges in times of pandemic

British writer Damian Barr explained it clearly: “We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some are on super-yachts. Some have just the one oar.”

The death on August 5 from Covid-19 of the Brazilian Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, confirms the vulnerability of the indigenous peoples in the face of the pandemic. He was one of the most influential leaders who helped create the Xingu indigenous park, located in the southern Amazon. Nearly 6,000 indigenous people from 16 different ethnic groups live in this protected area in the state of Mato Grosso.

“In Brazil, right now, there is a deliberated policy of destruction of the lives and culture of indigenous communities, using the old genocidal strategy: invading their lands and providing no support in terms of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Pietricovsky explained.

According to the Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB) there are now 23,000 indigenous people infected with Covid-19 and 639 have already died across the country. In particular, the indigenous communities of the Amazon have already seen their homelands devastated by illegal deforestation, industrial farming, mining and oil exploration.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has magnified their struggle, just as the forest fires are rampant once more, affecting the livelihood of around three million indigenous people – members of 400 tribes.

Indigenous communities: valuing their diverse identities

We must make sure indigenous peoples are visible, by valuing their identities, knowledge and community-building approach – ending centuries of exploitation and oppression.

Peruvian sociologist, Anibal Quijano, explains how the ideas of “race” and “naturalization” are linked to colonial relations of domination that are still affecting indigenous communities today. The conquered and dominated, were placed in a natural position of inferiority.

This social structure located indigenous communities at the bottom of the social ladder. The colonial era might seem over, but indigenous communities continue to seek recognition in a “horizontal society”, in which one can form relationships on a plane of equality.

In the Covid-19 context, indigenous communities find themselves with little access to health care and prevention. José Luis Caal, project coordinator of CONGCOOP, a platform of civil society organisations in Guatemala, explains how the Covid-19 pandemic has generated a health, economic and cultural crisis, where indigenous peoples are one of the most affected groups, due to the historical structural inequalities in which they live.

“The crisis has only highlighted the violation of rights they suffer, especially women, who have had to face an enormous workload as they are the main caregivers in the family and community,” Caal says.

The absence of adequate health services, economic subsidies and food support, as well as the continuation of extractive activities and the expansion of the agricultural frontier in many places, have had a great impact on indigenous people. They are vulnerable to the risk of contagion, Caal says, without their demands and complaints being heard.

In response to the health crisis in Guatemala and worldwide, a series of policies, projects, and subsidies are being implemented to alleviate the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. Government support, however, has not reached rural and indigenous communities. As a result, several communities have taken this issue and many more, in their own hands.

Indigenous Communities and Innovation – the Way Forward

In Peru, a complex country with different social realities, local non-government organizations such as ANC, a national platform of civil society organisations, are listening and understanding the innovative knowledge inherent in indigenous communities.

They constantly organise on-site studies and use an inclusive, ethnological and participatory approach. They don’t teach or import an idea of development; they exchange and learn from indigenous communities. In this way, for over 50 years, civil society organisations in Peru have contributed to the development of social sciences and influenced government policies, by bring indigenous voices forward.

“The first thing that must be understood and valued are indigenous communities’ concepts around nature and their environment. This is essential in order to respect their rights and above all, to ensure that policies do not disrupt their livelihoods. We sometimes think that the western vision is “natural”, and therefore their ideas of family, property, land, and their relationship with nature is trivialised,” says Pina Huamán of the Peruvian platform ANC.

Education, the type of knowledge one absorbs, is a priority for indigenous communities across Latin America. Guatemala for instance, has 22 Mayan languages, yet indigenous young people cannot find educational resources in their native language.

The Guatemalan platform, CONGCOOP, with support from Forus International, has launched a Virtual Training Centre this year, to offer its members, notably young indigenous people, “localised” expertise that will support new leadership in the country.

For indigenous people around the globe, the way forward is to guarantee that their existence, language and culture is respected. We must ensure a meaningful exchange and build bridges of solidarity instead of walls of ignorance.

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