Symptom checker app launches COVID-19 version
Ada Health has released a new COVID-19 assessment and screener available on the Ada Health website.
The new solution is free to use as a web app, is complementary to Ada’s main assessment, and can also be embedded by partners, health systems and care providers to support their ongoing COVID-19 efforts.
The solution will be regularly updated, and future iterations will enable users to receive more personalised and regionally-specific guidance, advice and care navigation. It is currently available in English, but will be made available in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and other languages.
Ada Health’s COVID-19 assessment and screener combines the latest medical knowledge with guidance from the WHO and a wide range of national guidelines.
The new solution will enable individuals to:
- Assess their symptoms: users can understand their risk of having COVID-19 based on an assessment of their symptoms and risks, as well as their exposure risk
- Receive guidance on next steps: the solution provides personalised guidance on what to do next, based on an individual’s symptoms and risk of suffering a more serious form of COVID-19
- Stay informed and manage their health: users receive advice on self-monitoring at home, and access to the latest global COVID-19 information
By offering users access to high-quality healthcare information and guidance, Ada aims to ease the immense pressure being put on health systems so medical professionals can focus their support on those in most urgent need, while also enabling users to better understand their own symptoms from home.
Dr. Andreas Gilsdorf, director of epidemiology and public health at Ada Health, said: “We learn from every outbreak to be better prepared for the next. What is really different with this pandemic is the speed not only of the spread of COVID-19, but also of the growth of knowledge of the virus and the impact of the measures against it. Scientists and countries are coming together to share evidence and insights in real-time, allowing others to rapidly adapt their measures accordingly. By tracking these new insights closely and analysing, synthesizing and curating global best practices and medical knowledge alongside Ada’s anonymised, aggregated health data, we believe we can contribute to tackling this pandemic.”
The COVID-19 assessment and screener uses a detailed question flow with a strong foundation in WHO guidance and best practice recommendations from around the world, including the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the NHS, the Robert Koch Institute, and European Ministries of Health. The solution will be kept updated according to appropriate national, regional and partner guidelines to ensure a screening offering that is globally applicable, but that can also be rapidly customised to the specific circumstances of partner organisations’ regional needs such as directing to relevant services and resources.
The Ada team has focused on ensuring the questions and guidance is comprehensive and user-centric, covering the factors that current medical consensus deem the most important. Users are asked questions around major and minor symptoms, serious symptoms that can indicate a medical emergency, possible exposure to the virus, and risk factors for more serious forms of the disease. The user is then presented with recommended next steps, guiding them towards global WHO guidance, suggesting that the symptoms entered are not likely to suggest COVID-19, or offering customised partner care navigation options if being embedded by a partner.
Dr. Claire Novorol, co-founder and chief medical officer at Ada Health, said: “COVID-19 is a serious and rapidly-evolving healthcare challenge. At Ada, we believe that digital health solutions can support by providing actionable guidance to individuals and helping to reduce the burden on frontline services. This is a time when those things are very much needed. We have established a dedicated team to work on the challenges presented by COVID-19 and are focused on using our medical and technological expertise to create high-quality products that can have a real impact on health systems and users, and that can be customised and scaled rapidly. This solution is only the beginning and we’ll be continuing to innovate and work closely with health systems and partners to understand and address care requirements as this unprecedented situation evolves.”