Request: Self-screener

[abquirarte]

https://myhealth.alberta.ca/Journey/COVID-19/Pages/Assessment.aspx

Jen is trying to build a really simple version of this from a US perspective w/ a quick alliance that's been hacked together over the weekend, so she's not suggesting that you try to build it, but perhaps put it in the pipeline as the next step - a really simplified screener. the idea is to get people directed into self-help and not to flood testing sites. anyway -- stay tuned

[abquirarte]

@TamaraIDEJA anyone in Public Health working on this?

[abquirarte]

Update from Jen P (via Ryan)

Self-assessment tool

A simple online tool that asks individuals their symptoms, assesses whether they need to be receiving healthcare right now, and directs them accordingly. The tool takes the public through a series of questions to inform those who are concerned they may have contracted COVID-19. The tool is live for the City of Ontario. Other governments can use this github repo to provide their own self-assessment tool on their official websites. Here is a list of several other tools. The CDC also now has a chat bot accessible from their main COVID-19 page.

Link to doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15mqiYK3Kemk_i_bSux0shkK84tCD9flJkOJ5vKcs92o/edit

[abquirarte]

From @jpetrucione and his GF 😄 The limited capacity to test individuals for COVID19 and the concerns about further spreading the virus through the onsite testing available in California has created a serious information gap for policymakers, medical systems, and the public. We have the ability and opportunity to bridge that information gap by adding a self-report/crowdsourcing tool to the COVID19 website.

This tool would allow individuals to self-report symptoms, which would allow the state to identify emerging hot spots in advance of medical system impacts. Given the algorithmic/hockey stick spread of the virus and the fact that people are typically aware they are sick days before they might require hospital level treatment, we have the potential to better prepare for resource allocations with this information.

The advantage of the tool for the alpha team is that it could also be designed to be informative for users. The tool could walk users through the set of common symptoms and ask whether they are experiencing each symptom, as well as offering users an open-ended text box to enter additional symptoms they are experiencing and worried about.

In so doing, the tool could help the user to better understand whether their symptoms are typically reflective of COVID19 and link the user to resources, including guidance on how to care for themselves, what to watch out for, and how to best protect others.

The tool would ask users where they live -- this would ideally be at the zip code level, which could be aggregated up to city or county. We would also ask about demographic characteristics for the purpose of understanding the relationship to the visus and tracking representativeness -- this information request could be explained and voluntary.

At the end, the tool would also ask users if they are willing to provide an email address so that we can follow-up in 3 days with an additional survey to check on their symptoms. This follow-up survey would provide useful information, but it has the added value of making potentially ill and isolated Californians feel like the state is paying attention to them.

I think this would be pretty simple to create for one of your engineers and the data would be straightforward to process. (I have lots of thoughts on the structure of the questions -- how to get accurate, quantitatively useful, and efficiently collected data. You would need public health input on the question language and on scoring the overall survey on the likelihood that the symptoms indicate COVID19 -- I would recommend a weighting scheme be applied.)

As the data comes in, internal heat maps could be generated for the Governor's Office and then information could be deployed from there. There is the potential to create a public-facing version, which would generate a lot more participation.

[cscairns]

hey all...the skylight team (https://skylight.digital/) has been working on a self-screener based on the CDC criteria...it's plain language and has undergone several rounds of usability testing...please let us know the best way to demo what we've done and how we can adapt to your needs

CC: @abquirarte

[abquirarte]

@cscairns thanks Chris! Is there a link that you can point us to? I would like to connect with our department of public health on this

[m-sullivan7]

Closing this issue as this is not a project we are pursuing.