StartUPDATES: New developments from healthcare startups

As COVID-19 has spread to every state in the U.S. and increased testing reveals exponential growth in the number of infected patients, Bright.md is helping health systems evaluate and treat tens of thousands of patients with its virtual care delivery platform. The platform allows patients to be clinically managed from their own homes to reduce the spread of the virus and, more importantly, give valuable time back to providers to focus on the patients who need the most care.

Using Bright.md’s digital triage tools, providers can deliver a diagnosis and treatment in less than two minutes, which means a single clinician can manage more than 200 patients each day. For comparison, in-person and video visits typically require more than 20 minutes of provider time, which means a single doctor has capacity for only 25 to 50 patient encounters each day, even when taking on exceptionally long shifts.

“Overwhelmed health workers on the front lines of the global COVID-19 pandemic are working long hours to treat the growing number of patients who require screening and care for the virus,” said Dr. Ray Costantini, co-founder and CEO of Bright.md. “By enabling at-home online care automation, we are seeing the number of patients accessing our services multiply exponentially each day, which means fewer patients will expose others to the virus and providers have more time to address the most serious cases.”

As of Thursday morning, Bright.md‘s partner health systems have:

• Screened more than 37,062 patients with possible COVID-19 infection.

• Escalated more than 985 patients who have met Centers for Disease Control (CDC) criteria for further care or testing.