Neyim Var? (What Do I Have)

This information was sourced from "Neyim Var? (What do I have)" by Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OECD), https://oecd-opsi.org/innovations/neyim-var-what-do-i-have/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO).

Innovation Overview

In our country, where 2 million people apply to health facilities daily, 6% of the applications are made to the wrong polyclinic. 120,000 people do not apply to the polyclinic that they need to go to. In this way, there is unnecessary use of health facilities with both cost and time loss.

‘Neyim Var’ application is basically an online symptom checker application. According to the complaints of the citizens, it directs them to the appropriate polyclinic where they should be examined. In this way, it is aimed that citizens can access health services effectively and quickly. It is an expert system application that evaluates the patient’s complaints and past medical records and presents possible diagnoses and outpatient clinic recommendations supported by artificial intelligence.

With this application, people are provided with information about the diagnoses that may be related to their complaints, increasing the health literacy and reducing the information asymmetry between the physician and the patient. In addition, unnecessary use of health facilities is prevented by directing the person to which polyclinic to go to. With this application, the triage of the patients is done before the patient comes to the hospital.

In the future, the laboratory and imaging results of individuals will also be included in the application and it will be possible to determine the diagnoses in a lower breakdown. It can be used as a guiding tool for those who are new to medicine and in medical education during the diagnosis of the patient.

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

With ‘Neyim Var’ application, after people enter their complaints into the system, the application asks questions to the person almost like a physician. The answers to these questions are evaluated together with the personal characteristics (age, gender, etc.) and past medical information of the people, and thus 5 diagnostic recommendations are offered to the person. In addition, by using the heuristic algorithm of artificial intelligence, it also evaluates the new health data of the person and develops personalized diagnostic recommendations. People can make appointments from the Health systems by using the ‘Centralized Doctor Appointment System’ (MHRS), based on the suggested 5 diagnoses and accordingly 3 outpatient clinic recommendations.

What is the current status of your innovation?

With the introduction of ‘Neyim Var’ application to citizens as of June 2022, a total of 9 million people entered the system with their complaints and received diagnosis and polyclinic recommendations. In addition, there is a patient satisfaction rate of over 90%.

Collaborations & Partnerships

The complaint-diagnosis-polyclinic referral algorithms of ‘Neyim Var’ application have been developed using completely domestic and national resources. The Ministry of Health, the university and the private sector worked together. While the physicians working in the Ministry of Health evaluated the complaint-diagnosis-polyclinic referral from a medical point of view, the university and the private sector worked on the artificial intelligence algorithm.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The users of ‘Neyim Var’ application are physicians, citizens and health service providers, namely public, private and university hospitals and family health centers.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Physicians can see the complaints people have entered into the system before the patient is admitted. Thus, evaluating the diagnosis and clinic recommendations of individuals. They can also give feedback through the same system. In addition, comparisons can be made between the diagnosis made by the physician and the diagnosis predicted by the app. The feedback given contributes to the development of the AI of the app.

The app will prevent citizens from going to 2nd or 3rd level health institutions for diseases that could be easily treated in the 1st step and unnecessary use of these institutions will be reduced. In addition, people’s awareness of their own health status will increase while information asymmetry decreases. In this way unnecessary patient density will be reduced and health services will be provided to those who really need it.

The system has been actively used by citizens since June. So far, 9 million entries have been made and system satisfaction has exceeded 90%.

Challenges and Failures

Although medical guidelines were used while creating complaint-diagnosis and diagnosis-outpatient referral algorithms, it took time to simplify the complaints and make them more understandable by people.

In addition, there are diagnostic referrals based on the findings determined by the physician after the examination rather than the complaints of the patients in the specified guidelines. For this reason, the clinical experience of physicians also has a great place in studies.

Physicians gave feedback that each patient’s own situation was special and therefore generalizations could not be made. And they gave feedback that such generalizing practices could give wrong results.

Conditions for Success

Information personnel who dominate the artificial intelligence algorithm and financial support are among the most important needs. Especially since human resources can be hired by different sectors with very high salaries, they should be paid salaries that will satisfy them financially.

The continuation of the use of Neyim Var application by citizens and physicians and the feedback of the detected problems are also important for the development of the application.

Replication

With the further development of ‘Neyim Var’ application using artificial intelligence, the accuracy of the diagnosis made by the physicians by evaluating the complaints of the people and the prescribed drugs will be evaluated. Physicians will be informed by the system in case of detecting a lack of information in physicians regarding unnecessary examinations and drug use. In addition, it can be used as an educational tool for students in medical faculties.

Lessons Learned

In order for an application similar to Neyim Var to be successful in other countries, integrating it with the systems that have health data of individuals can provide more accurate diagnoses.