Intellectual Capital (IC) has the potential to improve and influence the public sector renewal processes significantly, increasing its efficiency in all areas.
We submit a case study about a health and social issue with economic and legal interest stakes.
The Authors, physicians in public heath system, noticed the lack of objective, economic, repeatable, roadside tool able to evaluate the driver’s psychophysical status in the case of road controls. In this eventuality in Italy, as well as in most of the European Countries and in the United States, the “clinical” evaluation necessary to penalise the driver for alcohol or drug abuse is often performed by the Police rather than by clinicians. This might commonly lead to legal disputes with the waste of public and private time and financial resources.
The Authors have conceived and realized smartphone and tablet software (APP named “SafeDrive”(1)), freely available for Android and Apple devices. SafeDrive can measure the driver’s visual and auditory reflexes, compare them to a reference population and e-mail the results to a cloud database. This tool, if legally approved by Governments and provided to the Police, might reduce the probability of road accidents (preventive action) and legal disputes in case of road control.
Following scientific validation on healthy volunteers(2), patients on opioid therapy and individuals after alcohol ingestion(3), the Authors submitted their idea to the Italian Presidency of the Council Minister – Department for the Drug Policies obtaining a grant of 180.000 euro(4) to test the APP on patients with opioid therapy and to promote the results with Police and clinicians “on the road”.
The main problem in the management of the Author’s intellectual capital were the lack of interest of public stakeholders (mainly administrative people, with complex and prolonged bureaucratic procedures) in comparison to private stakeholders where interest and lean procedures were dominant.
References:
1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.newapp.safedrivebeta
2. Miceli L, Bednarova R, Rizzardo A, Samogin V, Della Rocca G. Development of a test for recording both visual and auditory reaction times, potentially useful for future studies in patients on opioids therapy. Drug Des Devel Ther. 2015 Feb 12;9:817-22. doi: 10.2147/DDDT.S77978. eCollection 2015
3. Miceli L, Bednarova R, Rizzardo A, Marcassa C, Della Rocca G. Alcohol, pain, and opioids: which is a major threat to driving ability? Ann pharmacoter 2014,48(11): 1531-1532
4. http://www.governo.it/AmministrazioneTrasparente/BandiContratti/Archivio/accordi_pa/politicheAntidroga/01Progetto%20TEDOL.pdf
