Design and development of a SaniMApp for the dissemination of useful information on frontier healthcare. The application is presented through a multilingual storymap.

Project realized for Sanità di Frontiera

OIS – Osservatorio Internazionale per la Salute Onlus is a non-profit association dedicated to the daily wellness of Italian and foreign citizens to promote a correct lifestyle, paying attention to the socio-cultural changes under way.

OIS gives special attention to the listening to institutions, doctors, citizens and other sector organizations. In addition to the research and action, it strives to provide institutions with updated information and data to help them make the best decisions.

The activities are focused on a program called “Frontier Health” that deal with the structural phenomenon of migration. The consideration is that Europe is often unprepared for the management of these phenomenon and unable to provide adequate social and health services in case of the request by different worlds, cultures, believe and local contexts.

The operations are connected to the needs related to the respectable integration of anyone living in a place, starting from the provision of healthcare and medical services. This contributes to ensuring the respect of the individual rights of everybody and to create a spirit of mutual acceptance, constructive exchange, enrichment of values ​​and hospitality. The provision of adequate services can help improve understanding, respect and integration among the diversity living in the same place.

Customer needs

The Association wanted to create a multimedia product to be shared on web with the aim of disseminating essential information for foreigners who need health care in Rome and Lazio and are without a valid residency permit.

The product must respond to the need to convey information relating to the location of the offices that provide the STP / ENI card (code) and it indicates the STP / ENI clinics.

These institutions allow treatment to foreign persons without a residency permit, it had expired or they have never had it, as well as to citizens without assistance or if they are in particularly vulnerable conditions. STP stands for Temporarily Present Foreigners; ENI refers to EU citizens.

Solution

For the promotion and dissemination of content, gisAction proposed the storymap format.

This tool, in fact, allows to incorporate different types of multimedia products, such as videos, maps, and images useful for the dissemination of content. Video pills allow to explain clearly, in various languages, what are the rights of foreigners in Italy in the health sector, even without a residency permit. A map has been inserted in the Story map to support foreign citizens who want to know the location of STP / ENI offices and clinics. Offices and surgeries are correlated by various useful information such as address, days and opening hours.

The storymap also gives access to a further application where, based on your location, the nearest STP / ENI offices and clinics are shown. The application was created using the ESRI “Local Perspective” template.

A space dedicated to social and health workers was also included in the story map, to remind the duties towards immigrants, even if they do not have a residence permit or other qualifications for access to the National Health System.

The last section allows to download information documents related to the regulations that guarantee healthcare to the foreign population.

The storymap is available in 4 languages: Italian, English, French and Spanish.

Benefits

  • Communication and clarity
  • Dissemination through web and social networks
  • Presence of videos, in different languages, which explain to foreigners how to access healthcare in Italy
  • Presence of an application to easily locate the nearest offices and STP / ENI clinics
  • Possibility to download informative and normative material
  • Updatability of the information

The project stems from the desire to create a new, upgradeable and highly diffused product, to convey useful information relating to a delicate subject such as health care and assistance for foreigners in difficulty.