Web-/APP-based connected care solution for COVID-19 in- and outpatient care (Preprint)

BACKGROUND: From a healthcare professional perspective, COVID-19 brings many challenges but also opportunities for digital healthcare. Healthcare professionals are also at high risk of infecting themselves. Therefore in-person visits need to be reduced to an absolute minimum. Connected care solutions, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and secure communications between clinicians and their patients, may thus rapidly become the first choice in such public health emergencies. OBJECTIVE: The idea of the COVID-19 Caregiver Cockpit (C19CC) was to implement a free-of-charge web-/APP-based tool for patient assessment to assist health care professionals working in a COVID-19 environment. METHODS: The COVID-19 Caregiver Cockpit (C19CC) based on the existing CANKADO environment. RESULTS: Through non-structured interviews with physicians in different countries, taking care of COVID-19 patients, a couple of different scenarios were identified where telemedicine or connected care solutions could rapidly improve patient care. These scenarios included outpatient care, discharge management, remote tracking of patients with chronic diseases, and including infected physicians under quarantine into telehealth services. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 Caregiver Cockpit is the result of an agile and iterative development process together with physicians. It aims to improve care and safety for those who are infected by COVID-19.