We saw an opportunity to serve people and help both first responders and the public health authorities during this crisis by reducing the pressure on the healthcare and testing systems.
HOUSTON (PRWEB)
April 07, 2020
Luminare, a Houston-based health technology and software company, has rallied to join the fight against COVID-19. Utilizing its patented platform developed for detecting sepsis, the company rapidly developed and deployed Quickscreen™, a web-based software platform, utilized to pre-screen for COVID-19 in at-risk populations. By partnering with community organizations to offer assistance and expertise, Luminare is focused on preventing further spread of the virus.
Offered free of charge for any individual or organization in need, CheckForCorona.com has been translated into eight different languages and screened more than 100,000 patients across every continent on the planet.
“We already had a very robust platform, Sagitta™, that is used by nurses and doctors for critically evaluating patients in hospitals for sepsis. By utilizing the platform to pre-screen for COVID-19, we saw an opportunity to serve people and help both first responders and the public health authorities during this crisis by reducing the pressure on the healthcare and testing systems,” said Sarma Velamuri, M.D., CEO of Luminare.
The goal of CheckForCorona.com is to help people self-assess, better understand their symptoms, and avoid unnecessary phone calls to already overwhelmed call centers. The website has already saved more than 50,000 superfluous phone calls to date. Additionally, Quickscreen provides communities and organizations a method of collecting valuable epidemiological data that can help shed light on the transmission and severity of coronavirus in specific locations.
Locally, the platform has been adopted by Harris County Public Health, the City of Houston, Fort Bend County, with pending agreements with additional counties, cities, and organizations in Texas.
“We have had a fantastic response to the solution in the face of limited availability of swab and blood tests,” said Dr. Velamuri. “Thousands of people who otherwise would have spent hours sitting in their car waiting for a test only to be turned away, or those experiencing long wait times on hold waiting for a call center nurse, are now instead able to know their appropriate action based on zip code in just 30 seconds. The epidemiological data we have collected is incredibly valuable, and we want to help state and national authorities get ahead of the curve by predicting disease hotspots weeks before testing will show where our efforts should be directed.
“Another advantage is the unique identifier per assessment result that is completely anonymous and can be used for tying incidence data to an individual test without the burden of scrubbing identifiable patient information for public reporting,” Dr. Velamuri concluded.
Luminare is also working with Houston’s Healthcare for the Homeless and is providing a web-based tool to allow frontline workers to triage homeless residents for quarantine, testing or other care.
Interested hospitals and community organizations needing a platform to assist with self-assessment and coronavirus screening should contact Luminare here.
About Luminare
Luminare’s, founded in 2014 in Houston, Texas, is on a mission to stop sepsis deaths and morbidity in hospitals through efficient, software-driven detection. Sagitta, the software platform focused on preventing sepsis, is named after arrow in Latin. Deployed in Texas and Arkansas hospitals, Sagitta has decreased sepsis mortality rates. Hospitals have reported that no patients have developed septic shock since deployment, in-patient code-blue events decreased by 27 percent, and emergent intubations and rapid response calls decreased by 11 percent. In Long Term Acute Care facilities, the rate of sepsis re-admissions went to zero.
Luminare has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the interoperability showcase on sepsis to demonstrate the platform’s advantages to effectively move patient care. The company was awarded the Most Promising Web & IT company in the U.S. in 2017 by Jones School of Business at Rice University and is also an alum from cohort X6 of the Texas Medical Center’s accelerator, TMCX+ To learn more visit https://www.luminaremed.com.
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