Family Health Unit Rainha D. Leonor, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
Title: Medical Logbook Platform: how technology can help Medical Residents
Biography:
Ricardo de Albuquerque is a Medical Doctor who graduated from Algarve University (2018), Portugal, and now a 3 rd year General Family Medicine resident, with a previous degree in Radiology (2008). Two years of lecturing experience at Lisbon School of Health Technology (2010-2012) and a technology entrepreneur – co-founder of Medfolio (2020). With multiple mobile apps developed and three national awards earned, he is one of Portugal’s most active medical residents, willing to change Medical Residency and Education all over the globe
Statement of the Problem: Portuguese medical residents are in general satisfied with their residency but not that much when it comes to non-clinical activities – usually from 6 to 8 weeks per year in total time. Each one of the 42 medical specialties in Portugal has its own curricula where quarterly, semesterly or annual reports must be done along with all the study and clinical activity. The purpose of this team is to prove that good results can be achieved with a fraction of the time usually spent in non-clinical activities with the use of technology.
Methodology and Theoretical Orientation: Portuguese medical residency programs were analyzed and a database matrix that fulfilled the minimum requirements of each medical specialty was created. Starting in January 2021 an online multiplatform was launched to ease clinical data input and a proprietary algorithm was integrated for specific metrics calculation, tables, charts, and automatic reports generation. Scientific activity and continuous medical education could also be tracked with specific database input areas. The platform is fully GDPR compliant with multiple encryption levels and data pseudonymization.
Findings: About 20% of all medical residents (approx. 2000 doctors) signed the platform with a mean total usage time in data input of 6h (hours). Automatic reports for General Family Medicine accounted for 100% of all users since these reports for other specialties were not available at the time of this study. The average usage of the platform for clinical activity registration was 85 users per day with over 200.000 consultations and 10.000 scientific papers presented or published in 2021.
Conclusion & Significance: Medical residents can now spend less time on reports and data working tasks as our algorithm performs most of the hard work thus leaving more time to study and practice daily. Specifically, in General, Family Medicine we allowed medical residents to go from about 2 weeks of total data input, database building, and analysis to about 6 hours of annual work. Our platform can be easily adapted to any language or specification to optimize medical residency programs anywhere in the world.