Newton Fund - CityZen: Connecting cities to citizens

Brazil is the largest country in South America with over 200 million people and São Paulo is the largest city, with over 12 million people. Due to a rapidly ageing population in Brazil, providing effective and affordable healthcare services to elderly and vulnerable people is a growing healthcare challenge across the country.

We are working with hospital clinicians at Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo to develop a technology platform for remote monitoring of chronic disease patients, enabling real-time healthcare intervention outside of hospital and at scale. This will use a patient smartphone App to help the patient to comply with the careplan set by their doctor, including reminders for taking medication, medical readings and making appointments, as well as personalised diet and exercise options. A linked doctor App will support the doctor to make actionable decisions about the patient’s health based on real-time patient information. This will improve healthcare and quality of life for people with chronic diseases, and also reduce hospitalisation and healthcare cost, supporting UN SDG 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing.

The patient App will also recommend options to patients to improve health based on their medical condition and overall health status by raising awareness of local services and activities that can help them to live healthier and better lives.

We are also developing a City Explorer web application that heatmaps the São Paulo neighbourhoods of Bom Retiro and Higienópolis according to how accessible local services, such as healthcare and transportation, are for residents with different mobility options, such as walking, public transport, and private car. This can also be extended to a larger scale. We are engaging with stakeholders in city planning, such as urban planners and developers, so they can use the City Explorer to gain increased insight into the most effective ways to improve the reach of city services to meet the needs of local communities optimally, based on differing demographics. This supports UN SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities.

We are strengthening the relationship between the CityZen project partners by sharing knowledge, skills and experience across all partners and by developing a commercial agreement for all partners. Through the CityZen website and by running workshops locally, we are developing a CityZen network to strengthen the healthcare and smart cities ecosystem in São Paulo and Campinas City and help Brazilian organisations to make international links. This supports UN SDG 17 – Partnership.