Clinics have begun to distribute pulse oximeters to Covid-19 patients that self-quarantaine at home. However, calling out to patients for multiple check-ups per day through clinicians does not scale. Doctor@Home calls out multiple times a day to patients and does basic interviewing. The health data is then automatically triaged for review by the clinician by an machine learning model.
For more information about the triage for intensive-care treatment under resource scarcity (Swiss Medical Weekly article): Click hereLow-cost equipment like simple pulse oximeters let patients easily monitor health parameters relevant to on their own. Trends in blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse, respiratory rate and body temperature can be assessed by clinicans to triage a patient - e.g. decide what medical equipment and procedure is required at what point in time.
As the main critical group for severe Covid-19 complications are the elderly, Doctor@Home uses "old school" channels like phone calls ("interactive voice"). Phone calls are made proactivly in intervalls or manually triggered by clinicans. The collected health data is analyzed with a machine learning model that predicts the triage level and alerts the clinicans on status change. The system can be extended with other channels (chatbots, mobile App) in the future.
"This works great. I can stay in my home, and will never forget to update my values."
"I don't have a smartphone here in the mountains. But with just typing numbers on my landline phone, I can still let the doctor know how I'm doing."
"Thanks. With this solution I can stay home with my mum and submit her values twice a day. I know the hospital will call me if they see some worrying numbers."