Long-term care has the unenviable distinction of being a connection for more than 40% of worldwide deaths from COVID-19 and, arguably, the focal point of 100% of the medical community’s attention regarding halting the virus’s spread.
Some experts believe by the time methods like contact tracing (CT) are perfected, the crisis will have long passed. That isn’t stopping companies from developing new automated systems (and high horsepower data engines).
CT has long been widely viewed as an essential tool for de-escalating the spread of infectious disease. But conventional methods and even a new wave of nifty apps have been met with some skepticism.
“Traditional contact tracing and smartphone-based contact tracing have not found widespread adoption in nursing homes because such methods are time-consuming, require human data input, rely on faulty memory recalls, have high false positives due to bleed-throughs, and require cell phone devices that have low ownership among the senior demographic,” said Jerry Wilmink, Ph.D., chief business officer at CarePredict.
Though CT has been practiced since the 19th century, it has yet to gain much traction in the United States. “While we’ve heard anecdotes of our members implementing contact tracing during the current coronavirus pandemic, we do not have data on nursing homes’ historical use of contact tracing,” said Majd Alwan, Ph.D., executive director, LeadingAge Center for Aging Services Technologies.
Deric Blattenberger, director of product management at CenTrak, thinks that may soon change. “Certainty-based locating has not been implemented in senior living communities in the past, in part because the technology available did not allow for it,” he said. “Technology has evolved, and today, certainty-based locating systems are affordable, wireless and relatively simple to install.”
Wilmink asserts that the current breed of automated systems “are effective tools for controlling COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities with over 52% fewer cases than conventional methods.” Alwan believes contact tracing will soon be treated as a vital defense tool for future pandemics or large outbreaks.
From the December 2020 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
