Start-up Practice Innovators Pty Ltd (PII Australia) has joined forces with health management platform Wanngi to launch a private telehealth service to serve Australia’s aboriginal communities.
The service, launched under PII’s GPNow brand, is designed to help communities make better lifestyle choices and improve their quality of life. These services will be delivered through Wanngi’s platform where users will be able to build personal health accounts that will have symptoms, chronic health conditions, medications and immunisations (including COVID-19) uploaded to one secure place.
“Nothing will ever replace face to face consultations with our medical professionals, however, program-based telehealth services such as SCIA (a service PII launched previously for Spinal Cord Injuries Australia) and now Aboriginal services provide a new way to reach out and improve service for community members,” Robert Hicken, Founder & CEO of PII Australia, said.
“One of the benefits of working with a locally-based partner such as Wanngi is the ability to quickly tailor the platform to meet our client’s specific needs.”
Introduced in 2017, Wanngi is a health management platform that creates a personal medical library for its users. The app enables them to store all their details in one secure HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) Compliant online location and export their history to enhance telehealth sessions.
“Our mission at Wanngi is bringing social change within the health industry by giving individuals the control of managing all of their health and fitness information all within one secure and private mobile platform,” Maree Beare, Founder and CEO of Wanngi, said.
“Time is your enemy with sufferers of chronic illness and delivering of update to date health records in a telehealth appointment can save lives,” Beare added. “We are pleased to be working with the GPNow. Our companies work with similar philosophies and it’s an ideal collaboration coming together as a team to create patient-centric solutions which open up care for the most vulnerable.”
Initially working in conjunction with the Project Telehealth Champion, GPNow and Wanngi are aiming to develop the service a culturally sensitive, pragmatic manner to achieve long-term sustainable healthcare outcomes for aboriginal communities and to “close the gap” between healthcare for aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians.
