An estimated 38 million people worldwide are HIV positive. Detecting the disease early is important not only for the comfort of patients, but also to prevent the spread of the virus and to ensure that patients take their treatment continuously. Vantage Health Technologies and the Institute of Human Virology of Nigeria (IHVN) have partnered to create an AI-based solution, the Vantage Patient Retention Solution, that can predict whether AIDS patients will discontinue treatment and, if so, encourage them to continue.

Vantage Health Technologies, a platform of the BroadReach Group founded by Dr. John Sargent and Dr. Ernest Darkoh, is dedicated to designing solutions for the world’s most complex health challenges to address health inequities.

The two physicians state:

“Our dream is to enable everyone in the world to have access to quality health care. Many health systems are set up to treat people after they get sick, but we believe the best approach to health care is to prevent serious illness by changing the system. We gave up our medical careers and became Doctors of Systems: BroadReach Group was born.”

AI to fight HIV

When BroadReach was founded some 20 years ago, HIV was a major problem in South Africa: 38.5% of adults were positive. The company moved there, supported by funding from USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s global economic development and humanitarian assistance.

The data was collected on paper, which was very difficult to use. So they created Vantage Health Technologies and through AI were able to connect data from 1,200 hospitals. Today, 2.4 million cases are managed on this Microsoft Azure-based cloud platform.

The Vantage Patient Retention Solution

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 25 million HIV-positive people, or 67% of the global population. However, 8.1 million are not virally depressed, yet HIV treatment could reduce the impact of the virus on their health and reduce the risk of transmission of the virus.

Vantage’s solution, funded by a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has enabled IHVN to predict and positively influence the behavior of high-risk HIV patients. According to Annika Lindorsson Krugel, solutions manager at Vantage Health Technologies, “Collaboration between public health partners, combined with the use of cutting-edge AI technology, is proving to be a very effective method for improving HIV/AIDS outpatient retention.”

She states:

”

In sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of disease and treatment issues has made it even more critical to use technology and partnerships to improve the care process.”
The Vantage Health Technologies-IHVN collaboration involved a pilot implementation at three Nigerian sites in which implementation teams were able to keep 91% of high-risk patients on HIV treatment.

The ML-based model uses patient history data to predict whether they will miss their next clinic appointment and therefore not be able to retrieve their medication, which would mean discontinuing treatment.

Lists of these patients are given to clinic staff who then intervene to prevent patients from missing their next appointment: text messages, calls and home visits are organized to provide personal attention to each patient before their clinic appointment.

Barriers to continued treatment

The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice independently evaluated the patient retention model, examining eight months of data from the three Nigerian sites and concluding that stigma, side effects, logistical problems, economic barriers, and forgetfulness were the main barriers to treatment adherence.

According to the study, patients were able to overcome these barriers with the help of caregivers, peer support and understanding of their situation. According to the institute, cultural sensitivity, ongoing contact with patients through trusted relationships, and support for large-scale development initiatives by local teams all contributed to the program’s success.

The Vantage Patient Retention Solution has been successfully implemented in HIV treatment and care programs in Nigeria and South Africa.

Annika Lindorsson Krugel states:

” The solution is a state-of-the-art illustration of what can be accomplished when artificial intelligence is used to actually power human activity.”

Translated from Vantage Health Technologies et l’Institut de Virologie Humaine du Nigéria s’associent pour lutter contre le VIH