Our Power to Be the Change at HIMSS21: Ideas from Vivify

By Vivify

One of the pandemic’s silver linings was the many healthcare and health IT organizations that showed up altruistically, setting aside their normal focus on profits and competition to contribute significantly to the global effort to combat COVID-19.

Vivify Health is a technology company that provides remote patient monitoring (RPM) through self-contained kits that include wireless devices, such as pulse oximeters, thermometers and blood pressure cuffs, along with a tablet for reporting results. RPM technology helps scale healthcare resources while keeping the health system from becoming over-taxed by using data to determine whether a physician needs to see the patient while enabling most patients to be screened and monitored at home.

What do we have to share to make our community better? Given our technology infrastructure and capabilities, there is much we can do to reduce the spread of infectious diseases, helping both patients and providers. In March 2020, we developed and deployed a no-cost COVID-19 screening program in some of the largest health systems in the U.S. Vivify granted unlimited use of this screening program for providers to offer patients and employees.

The screening program enables low-risk patients or those with mild symptoms to use their mobile devices to self-screen for COVID-19 by answering a series of questions that follow CDC guidelines. The tool helps providers better manage their schedules by reducing the onslaught of worried patients converging on a facility. In turn, this enables physicians to focus their attention on those with the greatest health risks.

At the same time, patients who may not have the disease now have access to a trusted screening tool that saves them from potential exposure in crowded emergency departments (EDs) or physician offices. When direct provider interaction is necessary, patients can access built-in telehealth through virtual visits and secure messaging.

According to the CDC, only 4.6 per 100,000 population had COVID-19 conditions severe enough to require hospitalization. The effects on the rest were mild enough for them to recover safely at home. The availability of COVID-19 screening through a mobile device helps already-vulnerable patients reduce their risk of exposure and keeps those who have it from passing it on to others by enabling them to remain in their homes for treatment, in all but the most extreme cases.

With the Delta variant threatening to cause another pandemic, providers are now better prepared with the right knowledge and tools as patients can receive reassurance without physically visiting their physicians. And the majority of those who do contract the virus can receive care remotely through remote monitoring and telehealth so that they can recover at home with minimal risk to themselves or others.