InteliMED:An innovative mHealth application supporting medical diagnosis in rural Pernambuco, Brazil

Background: The decentralized model of health management under Family Health strategy of Brazil constitutes various professionals at primary healthcare centers including physician, nurses, technicians and community agents. Each center is responsible for atleast four thousand people. In such a setting, mobile devices and health informatics applications play a key role in supporting healthcare services in rural and difficult to access areas. Purpose: InteliMED is an initiative of the telehealth wing (NUTES) of University of Pernambuco,Recife,Brazil. InteliMED aims to develop a information system using mobile equipments which supports medical diagnosis and second opinion through computational intelligence techniques and health professionals. Description: InteliMED is a decision-support system whose goal is to provide assistance to the rural primary healthcare centers in Brazil for remote support of medical diagnosis. InteliMED system aims to use evidence-based medicine applied to assist rural and underprivileged communities. Thus, InteliMED combines the concept of decision-support system with mobile devices for overall healthcare improvement. InteliMED enables responsible medical diagnosis in rural areas where there is a dearth of qualified health professionals. A physician can use the application to collect patient's medical history with the aid of a standardized questionnaire and corroborate their medical diagnosis. InteliMED also facilitates specialized medical decision support for areas such as asthma management. InteliMED has developed a systematic health information data capture mechanism with alerts and feedbacks for the doctors. Community health workers will also use InteliMED as a system to register new patients and reporting of suspicious diseases and a scheduler of new appointments.