Connected health technology is rapidly expanding and responding to emerging needs during the coronavirus crisis.  Here is some information on health care partners and health care technology companies and what they are doing to assist patients and providers during the pandemic.

Jefferson Health

Dr. Aditi U. Joshi is Medical Director of Jefferson Health’s telehealth platform, JeffConnect.  In an article published March 20 on Jefferson’s HealthNexus, Dr. Joshi describes how the telemedicine tool is providing access to health care providers during the outbreak, training doctors to meet the increased volume, and how patients can prepare for the telehealth appointment.

A March 17 article in HealthDay News quotes Dr. Judd Hollander, Associate Dean for Strategic Health Initiatives and Professor and Vice Chair of Finance and Healthcare Enterprises in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Jefferson Health, on the recent quadrupling of telehealth visits in response to the  pandemic.

Dr. Hollander is co-author with Dr. Brendan Carr of Mount Sinai in New York of “Virtually Perfect? Telemedicine for Covid-19” in the New England Journal of Medicine (March 11, 2020).

Learn more about Jefferson’s coronavirus response at www.jeffersonhealth.org/coronavirus-covid-19.html

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is also expanding the use of telehealth and video visits, when safe and appropriate, for physicians to stay connected with patients and families during the pandemic, offering an alternative to some in-person visits.  CHOP Urgent Care is also available for video visits.

Quil Health

Quil Health, a partnership between Comcast and Independence Blue Cross, has launched a COVID-19 preparedness tool.  Currently available by invitation to select partners, it provides users with up-to-date data from trusted sources such as the CDC, as well as useful information such as symptoms list, grocery shopping safety tips, advice on working from home, and caregiving. Carina Edwards, CEO at Quil, shared details and a story published in STAT to LinkedIn, stating, “With the onset of COVID-19, navigating health has changed immensely — prompting our whole world to manage health in a way we haven’t seen before. It’s in these times when the journey ahead is the most uncertain, that tapping into our tools for navigation and accessibility to resources matter most.”

NeuroFlow

NeuroFlow, a Philadelphia-based behavioral health technology company, has created a free Coronavirus (COVID-19) Risk Assessment and Anxiety Screener.  The assessment tool utilizes best clinical practices and CDC guidelines to help individuals determine their COVID-19 risk level as well as address the elevated stress and anxiety resulting from the pandemic.  Education information is offered along with guides to learn coping skills to assist with situations such as social isolation and economic uncertainty.

TrekIT Health

To help fight COVID-19, TrekIT Health, a technology start-up founded by University of Pennsylvania Professor Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, has made its collaboration platform free to front-line clinicians.  The clinical workflow tool enables seamless team-based collaboration across every provider in every setting and requires no IT resources to deploy.  It can support staff in auxiliary locations; help clinicians access critical information and their colleagues’ experiences across health systems and geographic locations; and understand a patient’s baseline exposure risk, if they have underlying conditions, and if they have seen another provider recently.  According to the company’s website, which features a link for clinicians to sign-up for the free-of-charge tool, “COVID-19 is spreading staggeringly fast and broadly with an anticipated surge of patients that will disperse care delivery across new settings.  We need a collaboration platform that will help us keep pace.  Now more than ever.”