Datos Health’s RPM solution was implemented in days to remotely monitor and protect healthcare workers and patients suspected of having COVID-19.

The Challenge

Rochester, New York-headquartered RRH (Rochester Regional Health) is a $2.5 billion integrated health services organization delivering leading-edge quaternary, tertiary and primary care. It encompasses, among others, five hospitals, and primary and specialty practices that span across Upstate New York, as well as rehabilitation centers, ambulatory campuses and immediate care facilities serving Upstate NY and a subsidiary, ACM Laboratory Clinical Trials, supporting clinical trials around the world.

Much like other hospitals and health organizations facing the increasing spread of the highly contagious and alarmingly lethal coronavirus, RRH was concerned with the pandemic potentially spiraling out of control and overpowering the capacity of its nurses, clinicians, hospitalization facilities and ventilator care systems. “Given the trajectory of the pandemic in major metropolitan areas, as COVID-19 continues to spread, hospitals may experience a surge in patients,” stated Bridgette Wiefling, MD, Senior VP for the Primary Care and Ambulatory Specialty Institute at RRH. “This could result in many health systems like ours quickly becoming overwhelmed and adding further burden on an already overstretched medical system”.

A long-time telemedicine visionary, Dr. Wiefling proceeded to seek out a solution that would enable RRH to mitigate the ever-increasing impact of the pandemic in the safest and most well-controlled way possible. The ideal solution would allow RRH to continue to provide optimal care to the patients in its community under the extraordinary risks posed by COVID-19, and simultaneously invest in its team members who put their lives on the line fighting the disease. Wiefling found just such a solution via RRH’s integration and project management partner Strategic Interests, LLC – a firm dedicated to helping healthcare organizations improve care and performance through innovative use of technology. That solution was the Datos automated remote care and telemedicine platform.

The Solution

Datos Health’s automated remote care platform is designed to directly and continuously connect patients with their sources of medical care, and make it easy for care teams to extend their reach via remote yet close ongoing contact with outpatients, all in the comfort of their own homes. The platform comprises robust and scalable cloud-based infrastructure with software engines facilitating data collection and incorporating advanced clinical analytics algorithms and tools, and an all-inclusive vitals tracking mobile app supporting personalized engagement and reminders, and the ability to launch round-the-clock video chats. Datos also includes a user-friendly care team portal featuring an information-rich dashboard and real-time remote patient management capabilities, as well as support for easy drag-and-drop definition of care program alerts, reminders and notifications.

The Datos solution has been a godsend, for both patients and our medical staff, patients no longer need to feel alone or afraid, with nurses able to remotely yet closely track their indicators, reach out to them by video calls, and ease them through whatever they’re experiencing at any point.

– Bridgette Wiefling, MD, Senior VP for the Primary Care and Ambulatory Specialty Institute at RRH

The specific solution implemented with Strategic Interests for RRH involved provision of the Datos automated remote care platform’s telemedicine app to patients and health workers with symptoms. The app enables these at-risk individuals to remain under remote medical supervision while in crucial isolation at home, with the Datos care team dashboard additionally facilitating RRH clinical staff under quarantine following exposure to COVID-19 to continue to provide medical care to patients themselves, also while in isolation.

The Datos solution was implemented extraordinarily quickly, within a 10 day period, and included establishment of a dedicated cloud environment, training of RRH personnel by Strategic Interests, and custom-configuration of the platform to their needs — namely, to closely monitor patients and medical staff impacted by COVID-19.

Following infrastructure setup and customization, patients and RRH staff received text messages enabling them to download, install and use the friendly Datos mobile app for vitals reporting, symptoms management, surveys and video calls.

RRH employs the Datos Health platform — powered app to monitor staff at low risk of exposure yet required to report body temperature twice daily for a period of 14 days, staff displaying symptoms and tested positive for COVID-19, and patients required to self-quarantine for 14 days due to displaying symptoms consistent with COVID-19, yet not having met testing criteria. The platform’s fully configured dashboard keeps care teams fully informed, with an integrated view of all tracked individuals sorted as per coronavirus symptoms severity.

Benefits

The Datos Health platform makes it possible for thousands of potentially affected RRH patients and medical staff members alike to continuously measure and report their vitals according to changing CDC guidelines — including body temperature, and blood oxygen saturation — while quarantined at home, even providing regular reminders to do so. The versatility of the platform also allows further metrics to be added, such as blood pressure and activity, as required. Its mobile app helps improve patients’ overall wellbeing by keeping them in constant touch with medical personnel, who can easily log into the care team portal and initiate video calls with them at any time, check on their condition and provide them with the confidence that they’re fully taken care of, even though they are in isolation.

The solution ultimately prevents RRH facilities from being overloaded by an overwhelming influx of coronavirus patients, ensuring that only severe cases end up being routed to emergency departments, directed to primary care physicians or hospitalized. It thereby helps protect hospital staff, and assists it in managing a great number of patients with minimal resources, all while providing an invaluably holistic clinical view of large-scale COVID-19-affected areas.

“The Datos solution has been a godsend, for both patients and our medical staff,” states Dr. Wiefling. “Patients no longer need to feel alone or afraid, with nurses able to remotely yet closely track their indicators, reach out to them by video calls, and ease them through whatever they’re experiencing at any point,” she explains. She concludes that “The app’s ability to track our healthcare workers closely while in isolation, too, makes it possible for us to additionally determine that they’ve crossed the critical threshold of being symptom — and fever free three days in a row, and get them back to work quickly – only further increasing our staff availability and capacity”.