DPR, a smart tool to facilitate the work of primary care social service professionals

admin on 15 September 2021

Picture by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels

Artificial Intelligence tool to support primary care professionals for social services. Analyzes cases and advises the professional workers to respond to the attended people. The primary care worker who serves a visit, after transcribing on the computer his notes about the most important person in the interview, pressing a button obtains in a few seconds from the DPR system (Requires, Problems, Resources in catalan) a recommendation on the response to give or the action to be undertaken.

DPR processes the annotations of the social worker, classifies the problem and the person’s request, and suggests to the professional the answer to give, according to the resources and services the institution can offer or advise. This “intelligent” system allows social professionals to respond more quickly, more safely and objectively to the user, and users to receive a clear diagnosis with high accuracy reliability.

This tool that automatizes the process of typifying the demands received by social service centers has been trained using machine learning techniques from the data of 300,000 interviews conducted by the social services of Barcelona City Council in previous years.

The DPR system is thus a tool of “collective intelligence”, which does not replace the decisions of social professionals, but provides them with guidance based on the collective experience of previous years and leaves the final decision on the response to each case or situation in their hands.

It is a pioneer tool in Spain which, in addition to supporting decision-making and providing guidance to professionals, makes it possible to improve the planning of resources and services of the administration.

Characteristics of innovation

Bank of innovations, Cross-cutting intervention, Information and planning, Lab, New service, New technological tool, Personalization of the service, Prediction and prevention, Process simplification, Proximity care, Speed up response times

Location

Barcelona

Partners/Funders

Barcelona City Council

Genesis

The creation of this tool arose in the Barcelona City Council with the aim of reducing the hours of primary care professionals for social services intended for management, and thus increasing the time devoted to social care. Through artificial intelligence, the machine read anonymized conversations and comments from the hundreds of social workers in Barcelona in previous years, and because many interviews are repetitive and problems resemble, through machine learning techniques it trained to classify situations, demands and possible responses, until it became able to suggest in each case the best response from what it had learned.

Level of implementation

Barcelona City Council first conducted a pilot test of the DPR system at social service centres in the neighborhoods of the Verneda, Sant Gervasi and Casc Antic. And in view of the good results achieved, the realization of the city’s other social services centers is peaceful. The goal is to streamline the first 50,000 interviews that municipal social services perform each year on the most diverse issues.

Currently, work is also being done on new versions of this tool that allow social professionals to write interview reports through voice and automatically become text, as well as using the DPR to help detect hidden problems, such as situations of male violence.

Further information

Propose your innovation

See our selection of innovations

Banc d’innovacions

COTI és una xarxa social que connecta persones amb dificultats cognitives amb els seus familiars i amb professionals de l'àmbit sociosanitari

COTI, a social network that facilitates digital communication for people with cognitive impairment

COTI is a social network that connects people with cognitive impairment to their families and to professionals in the social and healthcare sector.

wSocial platform that integrates artificial intelligence to improve social services intervention

wSocial, a platform that integrates artificial intelligence to improve social services intervention

wSocial, is a platform that integrates artificial intelligence to improve social services intervention

Cognitive telerehabilitation platform offering personalized online treatments

Mokin, intelligent translation tool for asylum seekers

AssistData, platform that facilitates the acquisition of assistive products for people with disabilities

photo for peer support network for mental health

TalkLife, a mutual support network for mental health

WACS, automated and massive call service to vulnerable people

admin on 15 September 2021

Picture from sabinevanerp on Pixabay

Service that makes automated calls to vulnerable people who are in their home and cannot attend social and health care centres on a regular basis or cannot receive close attention.

When a person who needs to be cared for is detected, the person receives an automated call with a voice from a real person, who asks him about his welfare state and possible needs. If the user needs to receive home care or if someone makes the purchase, for example, the system passes the call to a professional to specify the response to their demand.

This service used artificial intelligence techniques and was implemented in 2020 in the face of the inability of the Hampshire (England) government to monitor carefully and consistently vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the need to quickly contact thousands of people who were isolated in their homes, the PA Consulting company developed this massive, automated contact system to cater for and fuel a large volume of calls.