The Coronavirus will put the healthcare system to the test

During these times of uncertainty sparked by the global Coronavirus pandemic, healthcare facilities around the world are burdened with requests from patients like they’ve never been before.

Most efforts around the world are focused now on mitigating the spread of the virus, on ‘flattening the curve’ of the spread from an exponential one to a more linear one. This is because although the majority of patients don’t suffer any permanent damage, the small proportion of elderly or vulnerable patients that need intensive care are already overwhelming healthcare facilities in parts of the world that weren’t as effective in containing the virus as others.

We know now that the speed at which the virus is spreading will make most healthcare systems collapse unless each and every one of us takes immediate action and distance ourselves socially so we at least slow it down.

The problem right now is that 14% of patients have severe forms of the disease while 4% of them are critically ill. When you apply these numbers to Italy’s case for example, you end up with over a thousand patients that need ICU help and breathing assistance at the same time, figures that common healthcare systems aren’t designed for.

(Part of) The solution

Medicai is at the very interface of healthcare facilities and chronically ill patients, ones that we now know that are the most vulnerable patients in the face of the new Coronavirus. We feel that it is our duty to lend a hand to our partners in the healthcare industry and our patients alike.

We have been shifting our software development efforts in the past weeks to focus on the most useful features for our doctors and their patients. As our platform is still in the Beta stage, not all of its features are live, but we feel now that it’s more important for us to get the job done and postpone feature testing and polishing for later.

Right now, Medicai can be most useful in some key areas of radiology workflows:

• Triage – Medicai enables doctors to send patients an upload link that can be used for DICOM images and documents upload directly to an online location accessible by the doctor. Triage decides if the patient is eligible for treatment or not and sends feedback. In a situation where we must limit our social interaction and avoid crowded places, screening patients can save lives.
• Patient prioritization – With the medical file at hand and the uploaded DICOM medical staff can decide how to prioritize incoming patients, shortening visits as much as possible.
• Network of doctors – If for some reason the patient that uploads the DICOM can’t be treated by the clinic, having uploaded the tests to Medicai, rerouting the patient to a suitable clinic is very quick and simple.
• Information sharing – Medicai is first of all a collaborative platform. It can facilitate seamless exchange of information between clinics and save precious time for patients that get referred.
• Work from home – Being an online platform that lives in the cloud, it enables doctors to work from home or any remote location as if they were working locally

We plan to release two new features as soon as possible:

Online payments – Enable patients to pay for services online and avoid going out as much as possible Patient accounts – Patients will soon be able to share their uploaded DICOM files with any doctor of their choosing.