Kaiku Health expansion around the world continues as Leben Salud becomes the first user of Kaiku Health in South America. The Argentinian hospital went live with Kaiku Health in November 2021 and currently uses the digital therapeutics platform in radiotherapy.
Located in the Patagonia region in Argentina, Leben Salud treats thousands of cancer patients each month. In a region of great distances, Kaiku Health helps the clinic to bring the patients and care teams closer to each other regardless of their location. The dynamic symptom management enables early symptom detection and intervention, and the direct communication channel reduces any uncertainty patients may experience during their treatment. Kaiku Health also educates patients on their self-management strategies. All this is particularly important for patients who may not have easy access to visit their clinic.
“We came across Kaiku Health at the American Society for Radiation Oncology Congress in 2019. We could instantly see the potential of the service as a digital companion for patients during their treatment and beyond.”, says Ricardo M. Ruggeri, M. Sc. Medical Physics and Technical Oncology Director of Leben Salud. “Patient follow-up is one of the main problems we have in the region but also in the rest of the world. The reasons are vast but for us, it’s quite practical: our patients live far away from our clinics and they don’t always come to all the corresponding consultations.”
For now, Leben Salud is piloting Kaiku Health in radiotherapy. The implementation has started with specific patients who share their feedback throughout the use. This is crucial in order to harness the new methodology in the right way. “In the future, we see Kaiku implemented also in brachy- and chemotherapies as well as other disciplines of patient follow-up such as diagnostic imaging, PET CT, etc.”, continues M. Sc. Ruggeri.
Leben Salud uses Kaiku Health as a part of MOSAIQ Plaza and plans to centralize all the tools on a single platform. Together with the rest of Elekta, Leben Salud and Kaiku Health continue to develop new processes to monitor patients in the different disciplines at the clinic. The goal is to adapt to the needs of the institution and to allow further interoperability with different systems.
“Kaiku Health is now available for patients in South America for the first time. We are excited to see our digital patient monitoring and management tool help even more patients across continents.”, says Henri Virtanen, CPO and Deputy General Manager at Kaiku Health.