During the COVID-19 pandemic, AlayaCare led a ground-breaking project to deliver safe and effective home care as part of Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster’s COVID-19 program. The $60 million program invested in digital solutions to improve the health and safety of Canadians and support Canada’s ability to address issues created by the COVID-19 outbreak. $1.6 million dollars were invested in the Providing Safe and Effective Home Care project, of which $1 million was invested through Canada’s Digital Supercluster and $600,000 invested through the industry.
Led by AlayaCare, along with partners Acclaim Health, Ace Age, Bayshore HealthCare, Careteam Technologies, e-Cobalt Partners in Community Nursing, Paramed, SE Health, and the University of Victoria, the Providing Safe and Effective Home Care project equipped home care providers with superior planning and management tools in order to keep vulnerable seniors and their caregivers safe. The project has proved a huge success and funding helped push forward other outcome-focused initiatives including:
AlayaCare COVID project makes a demonstrable impact
To date, more than 30 Canadian organizations have completed 550,000 digital COVID-19 screeners, representing at least 7,000 patients and 2,800 care workers. Even when the pandemic subsides, these digital screeners can improve safety against other pressing health challenges, including Febrile Respiratory & Enteric Illness (FRI).
One participating agency, Partners in Community Nursing (PICN) said the screening system helped them gauge what levels of PPE and safety precautions were needed when visiting a client’s home. Their entire caregiver team had full, consistent adoption, thanks in large part to a strong user experience – including having to complete the screener only once a day.
During this project, AlayaCare also introduced schedule optimization improvements to our software and assisted vital contact tracing efforts over the past 18 months.
“In a traditional home care setting, most patients have conditions that make them even more at risk if they catch COVID-19 – yet they are typically cared for by multiple caregivers several times a week,” says Adrian Schauer, CEO, AlayaCare. “Our Providing Safe and Effective Home Care project has helped protect both patients and frontline staff with a digital toolkit for use during the pandemic and beyond.” That toolkit includes employee and patient pre-screening, contact tracing, and real-time alerts about symptomatic employees or patients to help minimize the risk of transmission.
Forging important new partnerships
The Providing Safe and Effective Home Care project generated new partnerships for AlayaCare, which include the following companies:
These partnerships move the dial forward on building an ecosystem of care that supports the current and future needs of the home care industry. “With our open APIs, we serve as the integration hub for other software partners that aim to create a platform to reduce and manage risk,” says Schauer. “Beyond the immediate scope of the project, we’re excited to be able to integrate data and patient information on a broader scale to deliver better health outcomes across the industry.”
