ONE CHANGE AGENT Enter Stephen King, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer presently emersed in Trinidadbased health-services who believes that the country—and, by extension, the Eastern Caribbean— can leapfrog this technology gap the way mobile payments leapfrogged fixed-line banking. King, a former chief-operations officer turned digitalstrategy lead, is spearheading a programme that swaps paper charts for open-source EMRs, pushes diagnostics into the home via connected devices, and re-imagines insurance so prevention gets paid for up-front. “We’ve spent 20 years treating chronic illness only after it lands in emergency,” King says. “Digital tools let us flip that script—screen early, guide patients online, and share the data so insurers actually save money.” FROM PORTAL TO PLATFORM Instead of launching another static informational website, King’s team is building what he calls a “patient-centric health platform.” Backed by a secure cloud stack, the portal asks visitors to start with symptoms, not specialty lists, then walks them through risk-factor questionnaires tailored to the region’s top Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) burdens. The aim is to incorporate AI engine triages each user to the right testing bundle or tele-consult; results flow straight into a personal health vault of Electronic Health Records patient can carry to any public-sector clinic, reducing time and cost to patients of double testing. The Inter-American Development Bank estimates that fifteen percent of deaths in low- and middleincome countries could be prevented through such digital pathways. King’s roadmap aims higher: move the needle on late-stage cancer and uncontrolled diabetes that currently drive the lion’s share of catastrophic claims. A LIVING LABORATORY To prove the model works, King launched a company owned Family Medicine Clinic early last year— breaking from the tenant-doctor structure that dominates Caribbean private practice. There he rolled out OpenEMR (chosen for its active opensource community) and piloted speech-to-text notetaking, remote point-of-care diagnostics, and virtual nurse check-ins. RETHINKING INSURANCE Perhaps King’s boldest move is a wellness approach developing with a major regional insurer. Instead of reimbursing only when disease strikes, the rider funds a cottage of wellness diagnostics with lab panels and risk-aligned tele-health coaching. It is early in the life and growth, but actuarial runs 3 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 12, ISSUE 06 WESTSHORE MEDICAL PRIVATE HOSPITAL
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