CHIVID: A Rapid Deployment of Community and Home Isolation During COVID-19 Pandemics

Abstract

Background: CHIVID is a telemedicine solution developed under tight time constraints that assists Thai healthcare practitioners in monitoring non-severe COVID-19 patients in isolation programs during crises. It assesses patient health and notifies healthcare practitioners of high-risk scenarios through a chatbot. The system was designed to integrate with the famous Thai messaging app LINE, reducing development time and enhancing user-friendliness, and the system allowed patients to upload a pulse oximeter image automatically processed by the PACMAN function to extract oxygen saturation and heart rate values to reduce patient input errors. Methods: This article describes the proposed system and presents a mixed-methods study that evaluated the system’s performance by collecting survey responses from 70 healthcare practitioners and analyzing 14,817 patient records. Results: Approximately 71.4% of healthcare practitioners use the system more than twice daily, with the majority managing 1–10 patients, while 11.4% handle over 101 patients. The progress note is a function that healthcare practitioners most frequently use and are satisfied with. Regarding patient data, 58.9%(8,724/14,817) are male, and 49.7%(7,367/14,817) within the 18 to 34 age range. The average length of isolation was 7.6 days, and patients submitted progress notes twice daily on average. Notably, individuals aged 18 to 34 demonstrated the highest utilization rates for the PACMAN function. Furthermore, most patients, totaling over 95.52%(14,153/14,817), were discharged normally. Conclusion: The findings indicate that CHIVID could be one of the telemedicine solutions for hospitals with patient overflow and healthcare practitioners unfamiliar with telemedicine technology to improve patient care during a critical crisis. Clinical and Translational Impact Statement— CHIVID’s success arises from seamlessly integrating telemedicine into third-party application within a limited timeframe and effectively using clinical decision support systems to address challenges during the COVID-19 crisis.