PALO ALTO, Calif., March 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — CloudMedx, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that aims to enhance the delivery of healthcare, announced today that its AI chatbot – AskSophie – enables patients to self-assess for the coronavirus (COVID-19). AskSophie is a free, online symptom checker that uses guidelines from the CDC to provide patients with the relative risk of contracting the disease based on their location, symptoms, and age. It further provides reference guidelines on what to do if patients are high, medium, or low risk.
CloudMedx is on a mission to share the resource burden due to the heightened awareness and an influx of patients who are concerned about the disease, by providing increased access to referenced material for education and risk assessment. This user-centered-care approach embodies CloudMedx’s “Aligned Intelligence” thesis to organize huge volumes of healthcare data, to enhance physician-to-patient interaction by providing a seamless experience and reducing barriers to health-related information.
For Patients concerned about COVID-19:
Regardless of whether or not a person has healthcare coverage, they can go to Covid2019.health, or if they are Medicare patients Medicare’s Blue Button (on the Medicare.gov website), and conduct a health-related search such as “COVID-2019” using the “Symptom Checker.” Users will then receive a list of common related conditions derived from population level data. For COVID-19, they can assess their risks of contracting the virus as high, medium, or low. For each common condition, CloudMedx also plans to offer links to publicly accessible educational materials from reference healthcare sources. AskSophie is not limited to assessments related to coronavirus.
For Clinical Facilities:
COVID-19 has already infected more than 1,268 people in the United States and 137,445 people globally as of 3/13/2020 (Johns Hopkins coronavirus heat map). AskSophie also aims to gather user reported data anonymously to serve clinical facilities nationwide and prepare them for a sudden influx of sick patients based on geography. The new insights gathered may also assist physicians in learning about the disease and better triage their patients.
“The virus is already beginning to strike fear in people and clinical facilities are gearing up for the worst,” said Tashfeen Suleman, Chief Executive Officer, CloudMedx. “The biggest fear is the tipping point when the number of sick patients increases in volume compared to limited resources. This will stretch healthcare resources to the limit where needy patients out-strip the number of ICUs, available beds, and medical equipment available to serve them.”
With AskSophie, CloudMedx aims to provide education and knowledge to patients who are concerned about risks and also to augment physicians in their quest to serve their patients using technology as a force multiplier. Armed with this knowledge, users of the AskSophie platform can be more informed about this, and other diseases, and be a part of the decision-making process with their doctors while avoiding public interaction as symptoms persist.
In the near future, CloudMedx plans to connect AskSophie to telemedicine providers and provide additional resources to assist patients. Healthcare is a village, and with the current pandemic growing in numbers, it becomes paramount to collaborate with tech companies and healthcare service providers to join forces and tackle this challenge together.
“We believe healthcare is a fundamental right for everyone, and we are driven to tackle its greatest challenges by aligning intelligent insights to improve care at scale,” said Suleman. “With the recent outbreak of COVID-19 and the medical systems globally already taxed, CloudMedx wants to assist care providers and patients to manage their health and alleviate their concerns by using technology that is available today better. We’re like the Waze of healthcare insights. Instead of user-submitted transportation information, we want to gather and organize large volumes of medical information to help patients and healthcare administrators assess this disease together and collectively align care to drive better patient outcomes. The virus is spreading fast and new insights are coming up every day. We want to offer a free tool in the hope that with enough crowdsourced self-reported data, we can get a better handle of the disease and may assist patients and care providers in their fight to conquer this disease together and in a timely fashion.”
Daniel Kraft MD, Founder and Chair of Exponential Medicine, added “An interactive platform like AskSophie will enable individuals to assess themselves for the risks using CDC guidelines proactively, and for local healthcare facilities and authorities to have continually updated ‘situational awareness’ which is critical in prioritizing clinical response and allocation of resources to COVID-19.”
Disclaimer:
AskSophie is not intended to provide any diagnosis, but rather to provide patients with categories of conditions common to people with similar symptoms for education purposes and to further investigate with their health providers. AskSophie should only be used to obtain general information. If you’re concerned that you may have the coronavirus, please contact your physician, or use your healthcare provider’s telemedicine offering to connect with a physician. If it’s a medical emergency, please dial 911.
About CloudMedx
Based in Palo Alto, Calif., CloudMedx Inc. is transforming healthcare delivery using Artificial Intelligence. The company believes in Aligning Intelligence to the 3 Ps in healthcare – Payers, Providers, and Patients to serve their needs. CloudMedx uses AI to enhance existing workflows and generate automated clinical insights, which in turn improve operations, case management, and patient engagement. for health organizations. Supporting some of the top hospitals and payers in the country, CloudMedx integrates natural language understanding (NLU) and deep learning with major EHRs and healthcare organizations nationwide.
