High Tech Joins Healthcare in the Fight Against Coronavirus

Authors: LeAnn Zumwalt and Peter Sullivan

With the launch of the Vitals Update app, everyone at ITX Corp. is so incredibly proud to take a stand in the fight against novel coronavirus. We developed the Vitals Update software solution to enable healthcare professionals to monitor potential COVID-19 cases while patients report their symptoms from quarantine.

What’s more, ITX is currently providing the life-saving tool completely free of charge to hospitals, urgent care, and healthcare facilities. For the past 3 weeks, our friends at Oklahoma State University Medical Center have been using the tool to manage the care of potential and confirmed COVID-19 patients.

By bringing together high tech and healthcare, Vitals Update is delivering a more precise diagnosis earlier in the treatment cycle. The collaboration symbolizes the limitless power of innovation that will continue to move, touch, and inspire our ever-shrinking world.

Vitals Update Is Saving Lives

The app has already proven to be a game-changer. Not only is it helping are hospitals, clinics, and urgent care facilities run more safely and efficiently, it’s literally saving lives.

The Vitals Update app is a simple tool that’s helping us monitor the vitals and symptoms of COVID persons under investigation and positive patients — ultimately allowing us to save lives.

— Heidi Holmes, Chief Information Officer at OSU Medical Center

No longer are medical staff required to spend time evaluating patients who fear they might be positive – but show no symptoms. Vitals Update is designed for hospitals to monitor patient symptoms while patients use the app to self-report their symptoms from home, safely and responsibly. Patients are directed to seek treatment when their symptoms cross a threshold pre-determined by medical personnel.

In a way, patients who use the Vitals Update tool become the true “first responders.” They’re doing their part by reducing exposure, eliminating the unnecessary use of precious medical resources – time, personnel, and PPE among them – and allowing medical staff to devote themselves entirely to the treatment of those who truly need to visit a medical facility.

ITX: A Culture of Innovation and Service

For almost 25 years, our global team of 250+ designers, architects, engineers, and product specialists have earned a reputation as tenacious problem-solvers. We seek out our clients’ thorniest business challenges and leverage the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions.

We also embrace service to others as a cornerstone of our culture. In fact, it’s times like this when we’re truly at our very best. Vitals Update combines our mission to solve complex problems with a desire to give back to our communities. It is no surprise, then, why everyone here is so proud of Vitals Update.

Our CEO, Ralph Dandrea, believes that “healthcare professionals combating the disease on a daily basis deserve every solution the software world can provide them.”

Team members from across the country and around the world contributed expertise to build the life-saving tool. Their work on Vitals Update was in addition to all their other client commitments.

ITX’s technology teams are committed to providing these heroes with the necessary tools to make sure patients whose needs are most critical get the treatment they require.

— Ralph Dandrea, ITX Corp. CEO

That’s how we roll at ITX. But we also know that we can never stop rolling, and we never roll alone.

Support from key partners – a grant from AWS Healthcare and medical insight from OSU Med – made the app possible and contributed to its success. But it’s cool to know that ITX design, development, and delivery expertise brought Vitals Update to life, and life to Vitals Update users.

How To Use the Vitals Update App

With a mobile device or desktop, patients enter their information directly into the app. The simple interface captures symptoms associated with the virus: temperature, presence of a dry cough, difficulty breathing, headaches, nausea, and fatigue. And because it’s used at home, patients avoid the risk of exposure that’s so prevalent in a hospital setting.

For medical personnel, risk of exposure comes with the territory. So the stakes are even higher. Vitals Update reduces that risk by distinguishing who is likely positive for COVID-19 from those whose symptoms suggest a less-threatening cause. The app collects and stores patient information, displays it on a monitor, and alerts medical staff when a patient’s symptoms require action.

Patients concerned about privacy need not be; the system integrates seamlessly with the hospital’s electronic health records and is HIPAA-compliant.

Vitals Update Prepares Us for an Uncertain Future

As a global population, we are now better prepared for the next pandemic with Vitals Update.

With recent history as our guide, we’ve learned that physical distancing works and political posturing does not. We can see and appreciate the finite capacity of supply chains to provide the PPE we need. And while we stand in awe of our healthcare providers, we’re also coming to grips with their limited power to sustain life. This is the harshest reality of all.

But just because these are today’s realities does not mean they are tomorrow’s as well.

We are right to be concerned for the health of our world, but tools like Vitals Update give us reason to be hopeful. What’s more, Vitals Update offers exciting new evidence that the ongoing collaboration between high tech and healthcare is alive and well.

A collaboration we can be confident knows no limit.  

Learn more at Vitals Update by checking out ITX’s recent press release.