“Even a small-scale outbreak has the potential to cause significant disruption to business operations and finances as well as our customers,” said David Guilian, CEO, of Futura Mobility.
FT. WASHINGTON, Pa. (PRWEB) March 15, 2020
Futura Mobility did not have to look far for a solution to protect its employees and the members of their households during the current COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic. Futura Mobility selected fellow Ft. Washington-based service provider HGE Health to remotely monitor exposure and symptoms exhibited by Futura Mobility’s employees. Based on the symptom data, employees suspected of having COVID-19 are able to be monitored before returning to the office or otherwise coming into contact with other employees, thereby preventing the virus from spreading. Medical care can then be rendered remotely to a vast majority of COVID-19 patients who will recuperate at home, while severely-ill patients can be directed to a local healthcare facility.
During the COVID-19 pandemic employees will fall into one of three categories: (i) confirmed COVID-19 positive, (ii) exposed to COVID-19, and (iii) the rest of the workforce. Confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 requires a positive laboratory test, and exposed individuals are those who have been within 6 feet of someone who has been positively diagnosed with COVID-19. Employers will be challenged to balance travel and work requirements with the need to reduce exposure among the workforce through social distancing and telecommuting. Individuals known to have been exposed to persons testing positively for COVID-10 will not necessarily require medical care or limits to be imposed on their activities. Instead, they will require self-quarantining to minimize exposure to others, including during periods prior to exhibiting symptoms, and to monitor symptoms and identify cases severe enough to require immediate in-person medical attention.
This challenge is even more daunting for employers, such as Futura Mobility, that employ a staff of consultants and others who travel as part of their employment and are particularly susceptible to the effects of a widespread outbreak of COVID-19. “Many members of our workforce take flights, spend nights in hotels, and visit customer facilities every month” explained Stephanie DeNicola, Director of Human Resources of Futura Mobility. “Such high-traffic environments exponentially increase the likelihood of contracting COVID-19, which can then be spread to our customers’ personnel as well as the staff in our headquarters.”
“Even a small-scale outbreak has the potential to cause significant disruption to business operations and finances as well as our customers,” said David Guilian, CEO, of Futura Mobility. “We are helping customers deploy systems to support distance learning and telecommuting like Real-Time Learning to promote business continuity, but these solutions will only be successful if they are accessed by a healthy workforce. For this reason and, more importantly, for the wellbeing of our employees and our customers’ employees it was an easy decision to engage HGE Health to monitor the symptoms of our employees and their households during this unprecedented time. We are looking forward to finalizing our onboarding plan and getting started.”
HGE Health’s digital platform and technology-enabled services, called HGE Care, allows physicians to remotely care for and manage patients from anywhere in the nation or internationally. HGE Care was originally developed to help Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients better understand and manage changes in their COPD symptoms, but the platform has been adapted to collect exposure, quarantine, common, and “other” COVID-19 symptoms per the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, lending itself to containment and management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform is simple to use via a smartphone application and tracks symptoms experienced by patients on a daily basis. COVID-related symptoms can be triaged and care coordinated by HGE’s nurses or directed in accordance with an existing action plan.
COVID-19 has now spread to over 110 countries around the world, infecting more than 120,000 and killing more than 4,000. The World Health Organization (“WHO”) recognizes that the severity of Coronavirus is linked to the age and health condition of patients. Patients of an advanced age (at least 60 years old) and diagnosed with a co-morbid disease are the most likely to experience a severe infection of Coronavirus, which requires special treatment of patients such as those enrolled in HGE Health’s platform who suffer from a respiratory condition. The WHO’s clinical management recommendation states that oxygen therapy is the major treatment intervention for patients with a severe Coronavirus infection, as patients with acute respiratory infection are at a significant risk of critical illness. Mortality in those with critical illness has been reported as over 50%, according to the WHO, thus the implementation of proven critical care interventions such as lung-protective ventilation should be optimized.
About HGE Health
Headquartered in Fort Washington, PA, HGE Health harnesses its deep experience in chronic disease management and digital health in pulmonary disease, telemedicine, and mobile health to develop a clinical services platform that delivers better care faster at a much lower cost for patients, physicians, and payors. Built on clinical protocols developed and supported by 16 years of research, the company’s technology has compiled the longest-running and world’s largest longitudinal data set of COPD symptoms, interventions and clinical management to help physicians provide care for a geographically and socio-economically diverse COPD and pulmonary patient population.
About Futura Mobility
Futura Mobility is a privately-held IT services organization specializing in technology solutions for healthcare and enterprise clients. Founded in 1992, the company has evolved from a technology reseller and service organization to a strategic partner by combining mobility with specific industry expertise. Through collaboration with some of the most forward-thinking technology companies, Futura Mobility offers customers an innovative, cohesive solution to address enterprise IT challenges.