BC hospitals adopting new app to fight COVID-19

VANCOUVER – BC Children’s Hospital and B.C. Women’s Hospital are among 26 Vancouver area healthcare facilities that are adopting a new app to fight COVID-19. The app allows hospitals to track staff and resources in real-time, and assign them to where they are needed most. No such system existed until this app’s launch.

Vancouver tech-company Thrive Health recognized that hospitals were facing a crisis in handling supplies and human resources. Thrive engaged another Vancouver-based tech firm, Traction on Demand, and with support from Salesforce and the Government of British Columbia, together conceptualized, built and deployed the COVID-19 Critical Care Resource Management application.

“British Columbia’s world-class talent is coming together to tackle the challenges presented by COVID-19,” said B.C. Premier John Horgan (pictured). “It is reassuring to see businesses and government joining forces to answer the call. This new app is an example of B.C. leaders in tech and healthcare solving problems to save lives globally.”

Built on the Salesforce platform, the app is customizable by healthcare providers, scalable without any new data centres, accessible from any permanent or temporary facility worldwide and portable by practitioners on any device.

“In a time of crisis, it is crucial to be able to track your people and critical supplies in real-time, so they can be allocated efficiently and effectively to save lives and ease pressure on the system,” says David Helliwell, co-founder and CEO of Thrive Health.

Traction on Demand is one of North America’s largest Salesforce-dedicated consulting and technology partners. Their expertise on the Salesforce platform was leveraged to quickly design and build the app.

“This collaboration was an opportunity for us to give what we’re good at,” said Greg Malpass, founder and CEO of Traction on Demand. “When communities and organizations come together and offer their expertise, amazing things can happen and lives will be saved. I have incredible gratitude for our partners in this effort for their generosity, ingenuity, focus, foresight and speed.”

The application:

• Enables healthcare workers to specify which workers, ventilators and personal protective equipment they have on hand at any given moment, as well as their facility’s current occupancy and resource capacity.
• Diverts patients to hospitals in their area where the most immediate and appropriate care can be given.
• Serves as a communication hub for collaboration between healthcare providers within a site or across regions.
• Offers advanced reporting capabilities to ensure that information is available at all levels of system leadership – from hospital department heads to regional health authorities.

Whereas hospitals can install their own independent version, the app can also be installed by regional authorities enabling them to get an at-a-glance view of their full network’s utilization and capacity. Authorities can also choose to launch the app alongside the public-facing Thrive Health COVID-19 self-assessment app, which collects COVID-19 symptom data volunteered by local residents, and pinpoints geographies with local viral outbreaks. This allows resources to be shifted to healthcare facilities in potential outbreak areas in advance of increased hospitalizations.

To learn more, visit tractionondemand.com/traction-thrive.

About Traction on Demand
Traction on Demand is one of North America’s largest dedicated Salesforce consulting and app development firms. The company helps commercial and non-profit organizations design, develop and implement Salesforce technology. Traction on Demand is a proud B Corporation. Visit tractionondemand.com for more information.

About Thrive Health
Thrive Health is a software company founded with a mission to improve the delivery of healthcare in Canada and around the world. The company is helping millions of Canadians to track their COVID-19 symptoms at thrive.health/covid19-app using the #1 medical app in Google Play and Apple App Store. Visit thrive.health for more information.