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."
