Sharecare Partners With IPsoft and NTT Data to Power Free COVID-19 Screening Solution With Conversational AI

By AIT News Desk On Apr 21, 2020

Pisgah Health Foundation becomes Sharecare’s first Blue Zones Project partner to integrate and deploy interactive screener to help people get clinically validated guidance on COVID-19

Sharecare, the digital health company that helps people manage all their health in one place, 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 well-being 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 guidance 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.

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“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.