Diabetic Foot Careby nurse Vjollca Kola is a project the WeObservatory has been overseeing last year (read previous post). We have been able to help the nurse put together and print a Guide for Patients in the local (Albanian) language. The guides have been recently delivered and Vjollca is finally able to give them out at her practice (picture to the right). It is commonly known among diabetes specialists that poor basic awareness and self-care of feet in patients with diabetes – especially in developing countries – is the first cause of complications and amputations. Thus, providing basic guidelines on paper and online is absolutely necessary. Speaking of raising
Screen shot of practice’s FB page
awareness online, nurse Vjollca has also created a Facebook page for her practice keeping the community posted on events and communicating general information on diabetic foot care. Notice the Guide has been exhibited there too.
Vjollca Kola, nurse specialized in Diabetic Foot care, has partnered up with us in order to make an efficient use of all the documents and experiences she has been gathering these last years while running her own practice in Kosovo. Together we came up with the idea to make a Guide for her patients that they will be able to take home or consult online. We are happy to announce that the Diabetic Foot Care Guide for patients has been published and available online in Albanian. We believe that having very simple and accessible guidelines and information is just a first step towards a better care and patient education.
This International Nurses Day the WeObservatory has launched Tea the Duckling, the diabetes educational video for children, their parents and their teachers. The story is identical to the one of Teo the Duckling , but the main character in this video is a girl – Tea. It might not be the case for everyone, but for some little girls it is important to associate themselves with a girl character, therefore we decided it’s important to create two versions of the story – Teo and Tea.
The photo on the right: launch of the video made during the International Nurses Day in Paris with the Connecting Nurses team. From left to right: Felicity Kelliher, nurse and educator (@dk_felicity), Nick Hardiker, director of the eHealth program at ICN (@nickhardiker), Tea the Duckling , Sylvie Coumel of Connecting Nurses and Dr. Véronique Thouvenot of the WeObservatory (Millennia2025Foundation; @Vthouvenot).
Also, the author of the Teo the Duckling story, nurse Norma Grau participated in the round table discussion in Spain as part of the international digital event organized by Connecting Nurses in honor of the International Nurses Day (photo on the right). The video of this discussion is available on youtube.
And , finally, here’s the video of Tea the Duckling, English and Spanish versions:
“Children must incorporate the illness into their daily life, but it is not easy at first. At the age of 4-6 years old they may feel different from their colleagues and friends. To include the illness into their daily life activities and avoid stigmatization have been the key factors that pushed us to create this story” Norma Grau.
Teo inicia la escuela después de su debut diabético y algunas cosas han cambiado para él. Antes de participar en la fiesta de bienvenida tiene que hacerse un control de glucosa y ponerse la insulina. ¿Cómo va a contárselo a sus amigos y compañeros de clase?
“This brings us to the one of the biggest challenges in mobile Health : itsability to scale up. There is tremendous amounts of small projects and pilots that are showing great evidence, but everyone needs to move to the next stage”
“Are we all connected ?” , a presentation made by Florence Gaudry-Prekins will give you a good idea on where we stand in terms of mobile connectivity in general and its role in advacing healthcare worldwide. A particular focus is made on Diabetes and mHealth as the presentation was made during the 2014 Diabetes Education Study Group Annual Symposium. And an important further reading suggestion is brought up: The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care by Eric Topol.
Florence Gaudry-Perkins is currently International Director for Global Sector at the headquarters of Alcatel-Lucent. Her current position entails relations with governments, multilateral and bilateral funds, as well as international organizations, an ideal platform to address the economic and social enabling effects of mobile technology and broadband in the developing world.
Her past work in higher education and familiarity with global health has influenced her in being a strong advocate of mHealth and mLearning for health in particular. She believes that global corporations now hold a responsibility in bringing their core technologies, products, services and competencies to form alliances with NGOs, Social Entrepreneurs, Foundations, Governments and international organizations to help develop sustainable business models which can then be easier to scale and replicate across regions and markets.
The video provided further down contains the entire presentation. However, here are some important citations :
“Mobile -cellular penetration rates are 128% in the developed world and 89% in the developing countries. Its quite astounding, we’ve never in the history of mankind have had a communication technology as pervasive and ubiquitous as this one. It opens up immense possibilities in terms of reaching out and it has great significance in the field of health and education.
More and more people are connecting via mobile phones as opposed to computers. The idea of having an intelligent computer in your pocket is no longer a futuristic vision and we need to get ready for that. It is taking the health world longer to realize this is happening and I think we need to accelerate the movement because this cannot happen without the health world coming on board and seeing the opportunities.
The following important aspects were brought up:
– Smartphones usage is growing worldwide, even in developing countries.
– mHealth projects are conducted worldwide. Some data from the 2013 survey done by GSMA, the association of mobile opereators based in the UK : in Europe about 117 , in Africa 363 projects. We see tremendous innovation coming out of developping countries and it is something to keep in mind.
– The scene on mobile applications is different. As you can see : 3000 to 4000 applications coming of North America, in Europe a little bit less and in Africa only 21. The question is , are they reaching people ? Only the top 5% of the Apps have reached more than 500 000 persons. ”
It is never easy to speak to children about a disease. Especially when this disease makes them feel very different from all the other children, as is the case with diabetes.
Norma Grau, a nurse from Barcelona, has written a story for diabetic children – Teo the Duckling – that would help them learn in an easy and educative way that they mustn’t feel different or ashamed for being diabetic. “Children must incorporate the illness into their daily life, but it is not easy at first. Various vital infancy stages have to be taken into account when helping them with the educational therapy. At the age of 4-6 years old they may feel different from their colleagues and friends, especially when doing check-ups as well as giving themselves insulin dose injections. To include the illness into their daily life activities plus avoiding stigmatization have been the key to develop our project”, says Norma Grau.
The nurse also had the story superbly illustrated by her colleague, Cristina Serrat Gómez, making it very appealing to children.
This story was shared for the first via Care Challenge by Norma Grau and was then selected both by Connecting Nurses and the WeObservatory. Here at the WeObservatory we are planning to help the nurse further develop her idea : during 2014/2015 we will contribute to the creation of another story customized for girls. We also plan to create an animated version of the stories. We will keep you updated on this project through our blog.
and print a Guide for Patients in the local (Albanian) language. The guides have been recently delivered and Vjollca is finally able to give them out at her practice (picture to the right). It is commonly known among diabetes specialists that poor basic awareness and self-care of feet in patients with diabetes – especially in developing countries – is the first cause of complications and amputations. Thus, providing basic guidelines on paper and online is absolutely necessary. Speaking of raising
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