Healthvana的数字COVID-19疫苗接种记录关于交流而非免疫护照

随着针对COVID-19的疫苗接种的进行（尽管起步艰难），许多公司正在尝试以各种方式支持推广。 Healthvana是一家健康科技初创公司，最初专注于为艾滋病病毒感染者提供数字化患者信息，目前正在使用苹果的Wallet技术帮助洛杉矶县推出COVID-19的移动疫苗记录。对这项技术的实施情况进行的粗略评估可能会导致人们认为这是关于为个人提供容易的疫苗接种证明，但是该技术和Healthvana专注于告知个人以确保他们参与自己的医疗保健计划，而不是提供免疫力通过。

Healthvana首席执行官兼创始人Ramin Bastani表示：“我通常认为大多数医疗保健软件的外观和感觉都类似于Windows95。” “我们看起来和感觉都像Instagram。为什么这么重要？因为患者可以从事他们了解的事情，所以他们习惯于交流的方式更容易交流，最终导致他们获得更好的健康结果。”

Bastani指出，他们是通过将这种方法用于艾滋病毒患者教育和交流的重点而成立公司的，并证明使用软件可以使患者下次接受随访的可能性比接受随访的患者高7.4倍。通过传统方法获取信息和约会通知。该公司已经建立了他们的工具和方法，不仅通过为个人提供更好的健康，而且还通过消除对消除误会并从实质上束缚患者的后续工作的大量工作的需要，从而降低了医疗保健提供者的成本。可以极大地挖掘临床医生和护理人员的时间。

“实际上，我们还降低了医疗服务提供者的成本，因为您没有1000个人打电话询问他们的结果是什么，并说'我不明白，我无法登录，我不知道“ SARS不反应意味着什么，”或我们通过简单性解决的所有问题，” Bastani说。 “这带来了巨大的改变。总的来说，我认为所有医疗保健的关键将是能够引起患者的注意，并采取措施应对其健康状况。”

这也是Healthvana与LA County在COVID-19免疫记录上建立合作伙伴关系的目标-采取至关重要的行动，以确保成功实施其疫苗接种计划。迄今为止，所有已批准的COVID-19疫苗都需要进行两疗程的治疗，包括一次初次接种，然后在以后的某个时间加强接种。该合作的主要目的是让LA县居民了解他们的COVID-19疫苗接种情况以及何时需要第二次接种疫苗，这是该合作伙伴关系的主要目的，并且受益于Healthvana在改善患者随访活动方面的经验。但是该应用程序还向用户提供有关COVID-19护理的信息，以及最有用的预防方法和减慢传播速度的方法。

尽管Bastani强调说，Healthvana最终只是消息传递的“最后一英里”，并且在确定正确的步骤以进行适当的护理和预防时还涉及许多其他层面，但是它们提供可操作信息的方式已经事实证明，这是一项关键措施的一大福音：联系追踪。在某些城市，Healthvana还将提示测试结果为肯定的用户直接从其设备匿名通知近距离联系人，这将为这些人提供免费的测试选项和信息资源。

Bastani说：“仅在大洛杉矶地区开展这项活动不到两个月，我们就收到12,000多人被暴露的消息。” “他们每个人都可能与其他人和家庭住在一起-这就是您可以帮助减缓传播的方法。”

与之形成对比的是，Google和Apple通过罕见的合作提供的最新软件更新，对iOS和Android设备中内置的曝光通知工具的吸收相对较慢。尽管作为基础的技术是健全的，并且专注于用户隐私，但到目前为止，其使用数量还远远没有动摇。例如，自启动以来，三个月内只有388人通过弗吉尼亚州的应用程序基于曝光通知框架发送了警报。

Healthvana专注于及时和相关的信息传递，以他们最有可能理解和参与的方式提供给用户，这已经显示出其对COVID-19及其社区传播产生影响的能力。这家初创公司已经在商讨在该国其他地方启动类似计划的问题，这可能有助于改善国家的疫苗接种效果，以及人们一旦获得COVID-19的方式也将得到改善。

Healthvana’s digital COVID-19 vaccination records are about communication, not passports for the immune

As the vaccination campaign to counter COVID-19 gets underway (albeit with a rocky start), a number of companies are attempting to support its rollout in a variety of ways. Healthvana, a health tech startup that began with a specific focus on providing patient information digitally for individuals living with HIV, is helping Los Angeles County roll out mobile vaccination records for COVID-19 using Apple’s Wallet technology. A cursory appraisal of the implementation of this tech might lead one to believe it’s about providing individuals with easy proof of vaccination — but the tech, and Healthvana,  are focused on informing individuals to ensure they participate in their own healthcare programs, not providing an immunity pass.

“I generally consider most of healthcare to look and feel like Windows 95,” Healthvana CEO and founder Ramin Bastani said. “We look and feel like Instagram . Why is that important? Because patients can engage in things they understand, it’s easier for them to communicate in the way they’re used to communicating, and that ends up leading them to better health outcomes.”

Bastani points out that they began the company by focusing this approach to patient education and communication on HIV, and demonstrated that using their software led to patients being 7.4 times more likely to show up for their next follow-up appointment versus patients who received follow-up information and appointment notices via traditional methods. The company has built their tooling and their approach around not only producing better health for individuals, but also on reducing costs for healthcare providers by eliminating the need for a lot of the work that goes into clearing up misunderstandings, and essentially hounding patients to follow-up, which can significantly dig into clinician and care staff hours.

“We’re actually also reducing the cost to healthcare providers, because you don’t have 1,000 people calling you asking what are their results, and saying ‘I don’t understand, I can’t log in, I don’t know what it means to be SARS nonreactive,’ or all those things we address through simplicity,” Bastani said. “That’s made a huge difference. Overall, I think the key to all healthcare is going to be to be able to get patients to pay attention, and take action to things around their health.”

That’s the goal of Healthvana’s partnership with LA County on COVID-19 immunization records, too — taking vitally important action to ensure the successful rollout of its vaccination program. All approved COVID-19 vaccines to date require a two-course treatment, including one initial inoculation followed by a booster to be administered sometime later. Keeping LA county residents informed about their COVID-19 inoculation, and when they’re due for a second dose, is the primary purpose of the partnership, and benefits from Healthvana’s experience in improving patient follow-up activities. But the app is also providing users with information about COVID-19 care, and, most usefully, prevention and ways to slow the spread.

While Bastani stresses that Healthvana is, in the end, just “the last mile” for message delivery, and that there are many other layers involved in determining the right steps for proper care and prevention, the way in which they provide actionable info has already proven a big boon to one key measure: contact tracing. In select municipalities, Healthvana will also prompt users who’ve tested positive to anonymously notify close contacts directly from their device, which will provide those individuals with both free testing options and information resources.

“Just us doing this in the greater Los Angeles area for less than two months, 12,000+ people have been notified that they’ve been exposed,” Bastani said. “Each of them likely lives with other people and families — this is how you can help slow the spread.”

Contrast that with the relatively slow uptake of the exposure notification tools built into iOS and Android  devices via recent software updates provided by Google and Apple working in a rare collaboration. While the technology that underlies it is sound, and focused on user privacy, its usage numbers thus far are far from earthshaking; only 388 people have sent alerts through Virginia’s app-based on the exposure notification framework in three months since its launch, for instance.

Healthvana’s focus on timely and relevant delivery of information, offered to users in ways they’re mostly likely to understand and engage with, is already showing its ability to have an impact on COVID-19 and its community transmission. The startup is already in talks to launch similar programs elsewhere in the country, and that could help improve national vaccination outcomes, and how people handle COVID-19 once they have it, too.