At the end of 2018, we started exploring how we can bring technology and public health together by exploring tech-based products and services to educate the public about their risk of developing disease,  to raise awareness of health issues and to provide engaging ways of communicating health messages.

Our first project in this area explored creating an online Diabetes Risk Assessment Tool. This tool is based on the work of Bang et al who developed a patient self-assessment diabetes risk score using a multi-ethnic US population. Whilst this may not be ideal for the Caribbean, because the risk score was developed with a multi-ethnic population we felt this particular score would be useful for the Caribbean public to get some idea of their risk for having undiagnosed diabetes or pre-diabetes.  Our hope is that in the future we can validate the self-assessment risk score with our own population here in St Kitts and, if required, develop a risk score specifically for St Kitts and Nevis.

In 2019, our exploration with Public Health Tech continued and we’ve been excited about the possibilities. Since 2019, we have explored the use of technology in our My Healthy Heroes project and in our new physical activity project that we’re working on behind the scenes which will utilise 3D animation. We are looking forward to getting creative and exploring how we can make the best use of IT in health promotion.