DALLAS (1080 KRLD) - Baylor Scott & White Health has received a $100,000 grant from Reliant to support its MyBSWHealth mobile app.
The hospital system is using the app to help monitor COVID-19 patients who don't need to be hospitalized and to allow people with mild symptoms to screen for COVID-19.
The app was launched in 2018 but has proven to be a leading tool for the hospital as it responds to COVID-19.
"The vast majority of people diagnosed with COVID-19 have mild illness and are able to recover at home," said Aasim Saeed, MD, vice president, Digital Health at Baylor Scott & White. "MyBSWHealth allows us to significantly extend our ability to treat and triumph over this virus by extending care and monitoring for patients while they are isolating at home."
The smart-phone app offers detailed quarantine instructions, regular symptom checking and dedicated care management. It also allows Baylor Scott & White to preserve its hospital capacity for the patients with more severe cases that require in-person treatment.
"Numerous people have either no symptoms at all or very mild illness," said Dr. Saeed. "Part of the effort as a whole was to defer patients who shouldn't be coming into care settings...which are reserved for the sickest during the peak of the crisis. Digital screenings and e-visits were things that we've had in place before but were brought to the forefront. We've done numbers of these things we never could have imagined."
Reliant made the grant through the Baylor Scott & White Irving Foundation.
"We really felt like this was an innovative way to provide the care and monitoring needed, while at the same time protecting their front-line workers," Leanne Schneider, Director of Community Relations for Reliant. "We really believe in giving back to the community. We just really wanted to do something that was at the core of fighting what the COVID-19 pandemic was all about."