Turkey's health care sector has seen major improvements with an artificial intelligence (AI) based, healthy nutrition advice application to be added to the e-Pulse Personal Health System, according to the Health Ministry.
E-Pulse, a public website provided by the government that can be accessed by Turkish citizens can be found in the Health Ministry section of the website and is generally used to check personal health-related information. The addition of this application is looking to further the quality of services the website provides to Turkish citizens. Turkey provides free health care and has a general health insurance system that covers all citizens.
The e-Pulse Personal Health System reaches 12 million current users and is looking to make Turkish citizens' lives a little easier with its newest planned addition. "Users will receive instant phone notifications about their upcoming hospital appointment or will be notified about any necessary health measures that they are expected to take. In addition to reminders and notifications concerning oral and dental health, an AI-based nutrition app will be added to e-Pulse's newest attachments," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. "Some 202,215 people added organ donation notices to their e-Pulse profiles. More than 3 million organs have been donated thanks to these notices. E-Pulse has more than 12 million accounts. Additionally, 53,311 blood donations happened thanks to this system."
Koca added that citizens could access their health records with the system via their electronic devices. They can also access their laboratory results, radiology images, information on previous drug prescriptions, previous health reports and medical examinations via the e-Pulse Personal Health System.
The system, which can be accessed with each citizen's personal e-Government password, can also save the user's general health indicators such as blood pressure rate, pulse rate, weight, height, allergy symptoms and diabetes. Users also have the option of downloading these statistics into their personal electronic documents to access them whenever they want.
The AI-based app is expected to become an important step in improving the Turkish health care sector as it aims to further digitalize and modernize the already improved medical tools. Turkey is moving full speed ahead in technological developments concerning health and general well-being. The app will be extremely useful, especially in the fight against one of the most relevant rising health problems in the world: obesity.
Turkey provides free health care and has a general health insurance system that covers all citizens. According to 2017 figures, Turkey operates 894 hospitals, 7,950 family health care centers, 2,700 emergency health stations and 171 community mental health centers with around 1 million medical personnel. The number of doctors per 100,000 people was 186 in the country, which is below the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 351 per 100,000 people. Life expectancy at birth is 78 in Turkey, while the child mortality rate per 1,000 live births is 6.8 and the maternal mortality rate per 1,000 live births is 14.6.
