PRA Health Services, a North Carolina-based contract analysis group (CRO), has built-in Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot tool into its Health Harmony COVID-19 Monitoring Program. The characteristic permits customers of the platform to make use of the AI-based chat bot, which has the power to acknowledge and reply questions associated to COVID-19.
Enhanced expertise
Kent Thoelke, EVP and chief scientific officer with PRA, advised Outsourcing-Pharma that the Health Harmony COVID-19 Monitoring Program permits contributors to trace any COVID-19 signs they might be experiencing, and educate themselves concerning the virus. The incorporation of the Microsoft bot, he mentioned, enhances the expertise.
“For users of the Health Harmony app, the enrollment experience becomes more personalized and is more accurate in determining the level of COVID-19 care needed,” he defined. “For organizations that have implemented PRA’s COVID-19 Monitoring Program, the integration allows them to understand patient flow and to monitor, educate, and individualize care with greater agility.”
Jean Gabarra, normal supervisor of well being AI at Microsoft, mentioned options like these assist enhance the accessibility of scientific analysis and healthcare sources.
“When technology like Microsoft’s COVID-19 Healthcare Bot and a user-friendly interface like the Health Harmony app can be combined with the insights and expertise of a global healthcare intelligence partner like PRA, patients’ health and wellbeing will benefit tremendously,” she mentioned.
Thoelke added that the Health Harmony app and newly built-in bot gives sufferers a excessive diploma of empowerment.
“With PRA’s Health Harmony app in their hands, patients can track signs, symptoms and self-manage their own COVID-19-related care, but if symptoms escalate, remote monitoring and the help obtained from a healthcare professional can make all the difference. PRA is giving patients more control and better access to personalized healthcare, right from their own devices and on their own schedule,” he mentioned.
Longtime partnership
According to Thoelke, PRA has been partnering with Microsoft for a while, on a number of tasks. The firm’s Care Innovations, for instance, has used Microsoft Azure companies to scale operations.
“When Microsoft approached Care Innovations and PRA on the new COVID-19 Health Harmony solution, it only made sense that jointly the three companies could make a deeper impact to the healthcare industry by expanding our reach via the Azure Marketplace. Not only will the marketplace allow us to continue to provide our patient engagement services to those that need it the most, but it will also help us continue to raise our own brand awareness into new segments of life sciences and the pharma industry,” Thoelke defined.
After a sequence of conversational questions and interactions inside the Health Harmony platform, the chatbot compares customers’ signs to Centers for Disease Control steerage. It then recommends certainly one of three obtainable COVID-19 applications through which they need to enroll.
Users interacting by way of the Health Harmony app reportedly encounter an enrollment expertise designed to be extra personalised and correct in figuring out the extent of COVID-19 care wanted. Additionally, organizations implementing the COVID-19 Monitoring Program are in a position to higher perceive affected person move and to watch, educate and individualize care with higher agility, Thoelke advised us.
PRA reviews that since March, hundreds of world customers have downloaded the Health Harmony app and enrolled within the COVID-19 Monitoring Program. Available commercially to employers, payers, suppliers and well being programs, gives three ranges of help:
- Educational: offering important signal monitoring, prevention methods and psychological well being help for individuals who are asymptomatic.
- Quarantine: delivering insights on what to look at for, outlining emotions of concern and isolation, and connecting with a healthcare skilled if publicity happens.
- In-depth monitoring: addressing symptom administration, frequent monitoring by a healthcare skilled and care coordination for individuals who have been identified with COVID-19 and who’re nonetheless at dwelling.