Pisgah Health Foundation helps launch new tool to monitor symptoms and risk around COVID-19

Press release from Sharecare:

Sharecare, the digital health company that helps people manage all their health in one place, today announced the launch of an interactive COVID-19 screener – developed in partnership with IPsoft and NTT DATA – to provide the general public with a helpful way to anonymously self-screen for the novel coronavirus. Accessible via Sharecare’s website and smartphone app, the screener is also available for free to any U.S. organization to put on their website in an effort to empower people to reduce the spread of COVID-19 while easing the strain on healthcare providers.

One of Sharecare’s strategic partners in the Blue Zones Project® – the proven community wellbeing improvement initiative impacting 3.5 million people across 51 communities in North
America by optimizing the environments where people spend their time – Pisgah Health
Foundation is the first institution to extend this resource to the communities it serves. Driven
by its mission to purposefully, creatively and collaboratively enhance health and well-being
across western North Carolina, Pisgah Health Foundation’s reach spans more than 300 local
non-profit organizations, provider groups and public health departments.

“Our aim at the Pisgah Health Foundation is to improve the overall well-being of the
communities we serve through innovation and partnerships. With the support of Sharecare
and the Blue Zones Project, we are rapidly responding to the needs of our community during
this uncertain time by deploying resources and lifesaving capabilities like Sharecare’s
screener to our residents and strategic partners,” said Lex Green, president at Pisgah Health
Foundation.

With the novel coronavirus pandemic forcing social distancing and shelter-in-place orders
across the United States, Sharecare incorporated the latest guidance1 on COVID-19 into
AskMD, its award-winning symptom checker that was built from more than 20 years of military-funded research, led by medical informatics pioneer Dr. Larry Weed. The company partnered with NTT DATA to integrate the dynamic AskMD algorithm into an interactive conversational solution powered by IPsoft’s industry-leading cognitive AI, Amelia. By harnessing the power of Amelia’s true-to-life conversational abilities, the resulting COVID-19 screener from Sharecare allows people to get answers quickly and anonymously without having to wait, helping them understand the severity of their COVID-19 risk; and whether they need to go to the emergency room, consult a medical professional, or stay home and monitor symptoms.

“Every day, healthcare providers receive a swell of inbound calls from people concerned
about the health and well-being of their families, and they just don’t have the resources to field every concern at scale. Amelia is a screener capable of answering hundreds of thousands of
calls each day, and she can evolve to help answer questions safely and with a high degree of
accuracy,” said Dr. S. Vincent Grasso (DO, MSIS, MBA), global practice leader for Healthcare &
Life Sciences at IPsoft. “Sharecare’s integration of Amelia and AskMD will give a concerned
and anxious public the answers they need, and allow medical professionals to focus on
tackling the global pandemic from the front lines.”

“We are proud to be called upon by Sharecare to assist in bringing this capability to
potentially millions of people across the country,” said Mary Edwards, President,
Healthcare, NTT DATA Services. “There is no more important work for us right now than
helping our clients and partners respond to the demands of COVID-19 and being a part of quickly bringing them innovations, like Amelia, that can make a difference in the fight
against COVID-19.”

As an established, trusted source for health information, Sharecare continues to deliver
relevant and timely information through its platform to help people on their health journeys,
which are rapidly changing every day in the face of COVID-19. To access Sharecare’s latest
content and tools for COVID-19 preparedness, awareness and prevention, visit
sharecare.com/covid19 or download the free Sharecare app on the App Store or Google Play.

For more information about Sharecare’s COVID-19 chatbot screener – including instructions
and HTML code to add to your website – please visit www.sharecare.com/chatbot.