Washington D.C. - Although the Hispanic population is around 20% in the United States, only 10% of these individuals participate in clinical studies.
In the case of the Black population, which represents 15% of the U.S. population, only between 4% and 8% of that racial group is present in medical research.
In an effort to reverse this trend, the Puerto Rican company Diversia Health promotes its artificial intelligence platform that seeks to connect health researchers with disadvantaged Hispanic communities in Puerto Rico and the United States.
"Minority populations need representation," stated Ángel Hoyos, chief executive officer of Diversia Health, after participating in a "legislative summit" of the organization National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved (NIHT) at the U.S. Senate.
Puerto Rican Luis Belén is the chief executive officer of NIHT.
"The future of health and innovation cannot be built for communities. It must be built with them and by them, with Puerto Ricans designing solutions, leading research, and building careers at the center of health innovation. Puerto Rico has the talent, resilience, and creativity not only to participate in that future but to lead it," Belén stated, referring to a summit NIHT held in June in Puerto Rico, together with the Trust for Science, Technology and Research, which also brought together Diversia Health.
The Trust, which serves as a mentor for Diversia Health, connected the company with the forum held in the U.S. Senate.
Hoyos indicated that his platform – developed in Puerto Rico – aims, through university and health industry researchers, to integrate Puerto Ricans from the island and Latinos in the United States into clinical studies.
"You can have many communities that don't participate because they don't know about clinical trials," Hoyos said in an interview with El Nuevo Día.
Insisting on the importance of creating systems that provide access to minorities and marginalized sectors, he indicated that Diversia Health's technology allows people to fill out forms in five or 10 minutes. "If they meet the requirements, the person filling it out, the researcher, and the person receiving the information all know it," he explained.
To access communities, the company has "ambassadors" in Puerto Rican neighborhoods. "The ambassadors tell us what studies they have. The representation needs they have... We can all be community ambassadors," he stated, noting that they receive requests from states like Florida, where 1.2 million Puerto Ricans reside.
Through the intervention of the Puerto Rican company, according to Hoyos, studies have been conducted on cholesterol, osteoarthritis, asthma, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions, among others. "That's technology with purpose," he affirmed, noting that they conduct visits to schools and universities to bring their platform closer to various sectors of Puerto Rico.