Partnership develops tool to monitor patients with flu-like symptoms

Well Health Technologies has partnered with McMaster University and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to introduce the digitisation of the sentinel surveillance program of FluWatch.

FluWatch is a program administered by PHAC to monitor the spread of the flu and other flu-like illnesses. The new Flu Automated Surveillance Tool (FAST) facilitates real-time surveillance of patients presenting flu-like symptoms and automated reporting of results to PHAC to help better assessment and decision-making. FAST was developed by McMaster's Department of Family Medicine and has been clinically proven as effective in capturing an accurate picture of the actual incidence of flu in a surveillance region.

Dr. David Price, professor and chair of McMaster's Department of Family Medicine, said: "FAST can be adapted easily to increase the frequency of surveillance at any time, or to extend surveillance to other areas of concern such as COVID-19. It also electronically connects a virtual network of surveillance sentinels led by the Public Health Agency of Canada, making it possible to communicate and implement changes to surveillance across the network within less than a 24-hour period if necessary."

Hamed Shahbazi, chairman and CEO of Well, added: "This collaboration exemplifies the commitment that both McMaster and Well have to improving health systems and outcomes for all through the creation and deployment of innovative health technologies. A digitised and automated FluWatch system that can track where people are experiencing flu-like symptoms is necessary in order to be pro-active in taking steps to prevent or contain outbreaks."