Nurse Diego Montandon, from USP in Ribeirão Preto, developed an app to help the elderly and people with disabilities to be effectively supported in emergency situations. Called e-SU, short for Electronic Emergency Aid Platform, the tool aims to help mainly those, within these groups, who live alone.

The number, in fact, of both elderly and people with disabilities and those who live alone, is not irrelevant. According to the IBGE, about 12,5 million of Brazilians have some type of disability, be it visual, auditory, motor or intellectual, while the elderly population reached 30 million people in 2017 — a number that should be slightly higher today. And the number of elderly people who live alone is also significant, totaling 4,2 million people.

The motivation behind the development of the app was the experiences of the USP nurse in providing care to these groups. The USP nurse reports that patients often lacked autonomy in contacting emergency and rescue services. Later, in his master's research, he also realized how this made successful care difficult, since communication often did not occur in the best possible way.

How does e-SU work?

The e-SU then appears in the project of doctorate by Diego Montandon as an attempt to solve these problems. What it does, basically, is to create a profile of the user to facilitate their communication with SAMU. The user can also send their location, photos, videos and text messages to the emergency service, precisely so that the service can be provided in the best possible way.

Still regarding the app's operation, the USP nurse states that the platform adapts to the specific needs of the elderly and people with disabilities in emergency situations. Although e-SU has access, upon installation, to information relevant to teletriage — such as age, location, whether the person lives alone and whether they have hearing or visual impairment — it is possible to manually fill in all types of information that can help in emergency care.

Unfortunately, however, the app has not yet been released. Despite this, and after being approved by both software development experts and the target audience, e-SU is currently in the registration phase with the USP Innovation Agency. After that, the app will continue to be tested so that the final version can be developed and finally released.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Journal of USP

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