Here at the American Heart Association’s Center for Health Technology and Innovation (the Center), we are working to harness health technologies and build relationships to accelerate innovative solutions across the health continuum.

Part of this work includes the development of the Innovators’ Network, a consortium that connects the health tech community in collaborating to develop novel health solutions. Though these members typically focus on an array of health topics, many of them are now working to solve the challenges presented by COVID-19.

For example:

American Heart Association Telemedicine Initiative: Doctors with Heart

With the goal of providing free, expert, cardiovascular consultations via telehealth to community clinics and FQHCs, we have launched Doctors with Heart. The consultations are provider-to-provider (vs. provider-to-patient), with the cardiovascular specialist consulting with the clinic provider directly, via the telehealth technology. With this new program, we are working to create scalable, measurable technology solutions for health impact, targeting under-served, under-resourced populations, which will be among the hardest hit by COVID-19.

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, RPM has become more important than ever. Several Innovators’ Network members are using RPM to track patients’ vitals and symptoms, including BioIntelliSense. Their FDA-cleared BioStickerTM is being used to monitor patients for symptoms of the virus, including temperature, respiratory rate and cough frequency, while the patient remains safely at home.

A Focus on Mental Health
With the outbreak of COVID-19 many people are finding it difficult to deal with fear and anxiety, new daily routines, and a general sense of uncer¬tainty. Technology solutions from members Total Brain, Happify and Gomo are helping people cope by providing content tailored to the challenges people are currently facing – and some of them are free. Learn more

Identifying Covid-19
Since widespread screening and testing is essential to finding outbreaks and slowing the spread of the virus, several Innovators’ Network members have applied their technology to provide this essential service. For example, CQuentia, a comprehensive analytics platform and molecular laboratory for personalized medicine, has announced its CLIA labs have validated testing for COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus and can now test up to 20,000 patient samples per month.

Patient Engagement
In order to achieve real behavior change, engaging patients is essential for technology solutions. To achieve this, member company PatientBond is offering its digital patient engagement services, consisting of weekly COVID-19 email education for patients and two-way interactive text   messaging for virtual triage, at no cost.

See what more of our Innovators’ Network companies are doing to address the challenges of COVID-19.