Background: South Korea took preemptive action against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) by implementing extensive testing, thorough epidemiological investigation, strict social distancing, and rapid treatment of patients according to disease severity. The Korean government entrusted large-scale hospitals with the operation of living and treatment support centers (LTSCs) for the management for clinically healthy COVID-19 patients.
Objective: The aim of this paper is to introduce our experience implementing information and communications technology (ICT)-based remote patient management systems at a COVID-19 LTSC.
Methods: We adopted new electronic health record templates, hospital information system (HIS) dashboards, cloud-based medical image sharing, a mobile app, and smart vital sign monitoring devices.
Results: Enhancements were made to the HIS to assist in the workflow and care of patients in the LTSC. A dashboard was created for the medical staff to view the vital signs and symptoms of all patients. Patients used a mobile app to consult with their physician or nurse, answer questionnaires, and input self-measured vital signs; the results were uploaded to the hospital information system in real time. Cloud-based image sharing enabled interoperability between medical institutions. Korea's strategy of aggressive mitigation has "flattened the curve" of the rate of infection. A multidisciplinary approach was integral to develop systems supporting patient care and management at the living and treatment support center as quickly as possible.
Conclusions: Faced with a novel infectious disease, we describe the implementation and experience of applying an ICT-based patient management system in the LTSC affiliated with Seoul National University Hospital. ICT-based tools and applications are increasingly important in health care, and we hope that our experience will provide insight into future technology-based infectious disease responses.
Keywords: COVID-19; app; clinical informatics; health information technology; hospital information system; mobile app; telemedicine.
©Ye Seul Bae, Kyung Hwan Kim, Sae Won Choi, Taehoon Ko, Chang Wook Jeong, BeLong Cho, Min Sun Kim, EunKyo Kang. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 12.06.2020.