Medopad Offers Support for Global COVID-19 Pandemic
Medopad deploys a not-for-profit remote patient monitoring platform configured with clinicians for COVID-19 and works with partners to fast-track development and delivery of COVID-19 digital biomarkers
LONDON, March 26, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- As healthcare systems are overwhelmed in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, British healthtech company Medopad is offering immediate support by providing its Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) software at cost to NHS Trusts across the UK and global healthcare providers. Medopad has worked with clinicians from Imperial College, Guys and St Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust and Johns Hopkins to create a readily available, out-of-box version of its modular RPM platform configured for tracking COVID-19 that can be deployed in days. Through its RPM software, Medopad helps healthcare systems monitor ill and at-risk patients, enable care for chronically ill patients and provide insights to healthcare systems to help them prioritise resources and respond more effectively.
To further support healthcare systems, Medopad is also working with its global partners, including Johns Hopkins and Tencent, to clinically validate digital biomarkers to identify individual patient risk for COVID-19 and monitor respiratory symptoms and disease progression using only a smartphone.
Monitoring COVID-19 Patients and Protecting the Vulnerable
The WHO, NHS, and FDA have formally recommended that healthcare systems use telemedicine and RPM during the COVID-19 public health emergency to reduce the strain on healthcare systems and limit disease spread. Medopad's clinically validated RPM solutions are secure, infrastructure-ready and scalable to address the demands on healthcare systems and providers, enabling more global understanding of the disease. Medopad's RPM solution is CE registered and under FDA enforcement discretion and is ready to be deployed in the EU, US, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and beyond for supporting patient care with chronic conditions and configurable for rare diseases.
Medopad's app and clinician dashboard help track patient data and symptom progression to maintain ongoing patient care and support, flag patients with worsening symptoms and notify clinicians of a patient's deteriorating health when they are out of the clinical setting. The patient's mobile app allows them to opt-in to securely share personal health data, including vital signs such as temperature, respiration rate, and heart rate using their smartphone. Medopad has pioneered its RPM solution across fifteen NHS trusts in the UK in the past two years, working with Trusts like Chelsea and Westminster Foundation Trust on diseases like Heart Failure to to reduce the unpredictability of patients presenting at A&E by collecting data and information on heart failure patients when outside of hospital settings.
"As part of the NHSE Test Bed Programme we partnered with Medopad to empower our patients. Through the continuous monitoring of their health, we aim to reduce pressure on A&E and outpatients and avoid hospital admissions and reduce hospital bed days. During the COVID-19 crisis, Medopad's solution can allow hospitals to continuously monitor and engage with their patients without the need to bring them into the healthcare system where there is an elevated risk of them contracting COVID-19," commented Felix Vaal, Senior Project Manager for Digital Innovation, Chelsea and Westminster Trust.
Developing a COVID-19 Biomarker: Using a Smartphone to Monitor Symptoms and Disease Progression
Medopad is prioritising R&D efforts for novel technologies that could help reduce the spread and management of COVID-19. Medopad is collaborating with Johns Hopkins and key opinion leaders from Imperial College and other major academic partners to fast-track the development and validation of a digital biomarker to determine an individual risk profile for COVID-19.
"We have been working in collaboration with Medopad for over a year on a digital biomarker project. COVID-19 presents an opportunity for us to take this work further and develop a specific COVID-19 digital biomarker. The aim is to adjust the data points collected and focus specifically on cardio-respiratory diseases, diabetes and other conditions which compromise the immune system to identify those who are most at risk should they contract COVID-19," added Alain Labrique, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Medopad is also developing a way to use a smartphone's gyroscope-powered motion sensors to accurately measure an individual's heart and respiratory rate without the need for additional hardware by placing a phone on the patient's chest wall for 30-60 seconds. Developing and validating this digital biomarker, combined with other data points, will enable more efficient COVID-19 patient monitoring and clinical team support by remotely tracking vital signs that indicate the severity of COVID-19.
Dan Vahdat, founder and CEO of Medopad, commented, "This is an unprecedented global health crisis that requires a global response. To do our part, Medopad is providing our platform and development efforts to aid in the fight of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have already had initial success detecting digital biomarkers for rare and chronic diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and are now shifting most of our resources towards COVID-19 efforts. Now is the time for global collaboration to help ease the burden of COVID-19 on our healthcare systems, reduce disease spread through remote patient monitoring and maintain the continuity of care for at-risk populations."
Medopad is conducting feasibility studies and clinical trials to validate its digital biomarkers for detecting and assessing diseases and health conditions such as Parkinson's with partners including Tencent, J&J, Bayer and more. It is now working with partners including Johns Hopkins and Tencent to fast-track the development and validation of a specific digital biomarker for COVID-19 using only a smartphone.
"The joint Medopad and Tencent Medical AI lab have been working for the last 2 years on various digital biomarker projects. COVID-19 presents an opportunity for us to modify some of our R&D work to showcase the power of using smartphones and simple devices to capture data directly from patients and the population at large and generating novel insights from it. Together with our academic partners, we are working on a number of digital biomarkers which can be done with only a smartphone to help unlock valuable data to better understand and treat COVID-19. While moving at pace, we continue to work closely with regulators and design our technology to maximise data privacy," and Dr. David Wei Fan, Executive Director of Tencent Medical AI Lab.
About Medopad
Medopad is a global health technology company that aims to use data and technology to give everyone the full picture of patients' health to help people live longer, fuller lives. Medopad partners with the world's largest healthcare systems, pharma companies, research institutes, insurers and technology companies like Apple and Tencent to create a connected health ecosystem that empowers patients, improves clinical outcomes and enables the future of healthcare. http://www.medopad.com
SOURCE Medopad
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