LOS GATOS, Calif.– CAREMINDr, which delivers mobile-enabled remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions that give doctors the ability to check in on patients in between face-to-face visits, announced the release of the Back-to-Work module of its app designed to give employers and healthcare organizations an employee screening tool to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The solution, already available in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store for Android, arrives just as many U.S. states are beginning to re-open their economies and are allowing businesses and other organizations to resume in-person operations. CAREMINDr’s Back-to-Work RPM solution enables employers to start returning their employees to the workplace with preventive measures in place to identify potential symptoms of COVID-19, which could prevent the spread of the virus within workplaces and communities.
“With a COVID-19 vaccine many months or even years away, employee screening and testing are essential for employers who need to have their teams working together in the same location,” said Harry Soza, CEO of CAREMINDr. “The Back-to-Work app offers a quick, effective and consistent means to monitor and identify employees who may be showing signs of the virus before they arrive at work, which can protect co-workers and the community at large.”
In the Back-to-Work program, employers partner with a medical practice or other healthcare organization, which has a Clinical Review Center that reviews employees’ temperatures and symptoms, which are entered into the app by the employee (if the employer has its own onsite medical providers, they perform the clinical review function).
Each day an hour or two before their shifts begin, employees report their temperature and any potential COVID-19 symptoms they are experiencing into the Back-to-Work Care Journey. Employees are also asked if they have been within six feet of anyone exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms since they last reported in. CAREMINDr’s RPM technology flags abnormal responses among the reports that the Clinical Review Center team follows up on as appropriate. If an abnormal report is received, the employer, depending on symptoms and their protocols, may then request the employee receive a COVID-19 test or may recommend quarantining at home and monitoring symptoms.
The Back-to-Work Clinical Review Center creates a log of all the employee reports received each day. Those reports with alerts are listed at the top of the employer’s report, with a red dot for rapid recognition and immediate action. A checkbox indicates if a reviewer has examined the report. Reviewers can view historical reports by patient, employer, region or symptom to identify potential outbreaks on a micro- or macro-level, so they can more easily perform contact tracing investigations.
“Based on the data from these reports, public health officials can spot potential emerging outbreak hotspots in communities before the virus spreads further,” Soza said. “That is why we’re so excited about this latest version of our app. In addition to helping employers resume at least some of their pre-crisis operations, Back-to-Work helps protect the health and safety of our families, friends and entire communities.”
The Back-to-Work Journey is one of CAREMINDr’s exclusive Care Journeys; others include hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. These journeys enable healthcare providers to efficiently monitor and check in with patients between face-to-face appointments through automated, scheduled, condition-specific and clinically relevant patient-reported data. CAREMINDr also offers a separate COVID-19 Monitoring solution to support the management of patients with related symptoms or who have tested positive for COVID-19 and are self-quarantining at home.
Care Journeys are often supported by home medical devices such as thermometers, pulse oximeters, glucometers and blood pressure cuffs. Reporting data from these devices and answering clinically relevant questions through the app establishes an accountable dialogue for patients with providers—
one that nurtures trust and engagement. This approach enables physician practices, health systems and payers to reduce emergency department visits and hospital admissions by detecting health deterioration earlier, while encouraging care plan adherence through repeated, automated contact with the patient that encourages their action and response.
