A digital contact tracing simulation reduced long-term care COVID-19 cases by 52% more than when using screening and other manual control efforts.
“Conventional control measures, including symptom-based screening and temperature-based monitoring, are ineffective at identifying asymptomatic residents that were exposed, and viral spread is too fast in close living spaces to be contained by slow manual contact tracing,” explained Gerald Wilmink, Ph.D., of CarePredict, which conducted the study with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
CarePredict’s PinPoint outperformed conventional methods on identifying COVID-19 likelihood in asymptomatic cases; time-to-trace among staff, residents and visitors; and probability of tracing all contacts exposed to a contaminated area. It also resulted in 22% fewer deaths than symptom-based monitoring.
A study published last summer in The Lancet found mobile tracing apps provide “a meaningful contribution” and help minimize notification and tracing delays.
But not all tools are created equal.
Use of low-power networks, Bluetooth and ultra wideband dictate how well and how quickly systems can alert providers to potential exposures. Quuppa’s Intelligent Locating System uses positioning algorithms to enable accuracy to the centimeter.
Michele York, product marketing manager for Secure Care Products, said the ideal tracing solution should have a standards-based, open-interface tool that “plays nice” with a facility’s technology ecosystem. Investing in the right system may pay off in other ways.
“Many location solutions can be used for asset tracking and management, process improvements, emergency staff duress response and wander management, and be able to offer quality of life metrics and clinical care reference data,” she wrote recently.
From the October 2020 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
