AppSCOLTAMI 

AppSCOLTAMI (free to download from App Store and Google Store) was created as a tool aimed at the patient and the doctor.
Specifically, it allows the patient to give voice to his/her emotions, concerns and relational and communicative expectations related to the meeting with the doctor. The patient can also receive advice – also shared with the doctor – in order to make the communication between the two actors more and more effective.

WHY THE PROJECT WAS BORN AND WITH WHAT OBJECTIVES 

HIV is a virus that disrupts lives, changes relationships and deeply affects people’s lives. It cannot be treated only as a disease with symptoms and treatment. More is needed. We need to bring people together.

A project led by the research team of EngageMinds HUB that – thanks to the unconditional support of MSD Foundation and Datawizard (technology partner) has worked on the development of an app dedicated to people with HIV to improve the empathic relationship with the infectious disease specialist.

The COVID-19 emergence puts health care for chronic illnesses to a hard test: both on an organisational level – since there are postponements of “non-urgent” treatments – and on a relational-communicative level – since COVID-19 has inevitably provoked social distancing and “depersonalisation”. In the specific case of HIV, the impact is even more marked: displacement/subtraction of resources (structural, personnel, economic, etc.) and less relational continuity in the taking in charge. There is also an increased need – on the part of doctors – for new tools to support communication with the patient in order to promote continuity of care (e.g. televisit).

As part of this project, scientific literature has highlighted the communication needs of patients:

• the need to feel that they are considered as a person: that their infectious disease specialist cares about their overall health and communicates in a clear and accessible way
• the expectation of receiving help to deconstruct fears and negative representations of the disease in order to accept one’s clinical condition and be able to establish meaningful social relationships.
• the need to acquire and improve one’s skills in managing one’s emotions and feelings, to build spaces of “escape” and protect one’s free time so as not to focus only on illness and to increase one’s ability to make plans for the future.
• the expectation to learn how to ask precise questions to health professionals in order to be heard, to learn to accept some kind of psychological counselling, to be aware of the signs and symptoms that announce a degeneration of one’s clinical condition.

The communication needs of infectivologists have also emerged from the scientific literature:
• clinicians report the need for tools that facilitate communication – even if not face-to-face – and more time devoted to listening to the perspective of patients and their families.
• Moreover, the literature highlights the need to train physicians in the specifics of the psychological experience of patients with HIV in order to better understand the representations related to HIV infection and the implications of these on patient behaviour.
• A further need particularly described in the literature concerns the acquisition of specific communication skills.

The objectives of the project are:
• Optimize the quality of care by improving the effectiveness of the relationship with the clinician.
• Embed value in a “sustainable” care relationship (without compounding time in patient management for the physician).
• Promoting a digital health that puts the person at the centre.

ADVICE SECTION

In this section the user will receive proposals that he/she can analyse and share with the doctor who follows him/her