Conversa pitches its modified chat-based tool to monitor employee health in the wake of COVID-19

Conversa Health, the automated chat technology for healthcare updates, is pitching a modified version of its service specifically to monitor for symptoms of COVID-19.

The company’s personalized automated chat asks about employees’ potential exposure to the novel coronavirus and then asks about potential symptoms.

Once employees complete the survey they are either cleared to go into work and receive a digital badge that they’ve taken the check up, or are instructed to stay home and receive some information on how to take care of themselves and monitor their condition for changes.

“There is no real choice between reopening for business and keeping the spread of coronavirus in check—we must do both,” said Murray Brozinsky, Conversa’s chief executive, in a statement. “As businesses and schools anticipate getting back to work in their physical locations, it is absolutely vital that they create a healthy and safe environment for all returning employees, students and visitors.”

Healthcare organizations like Northwell Health, UCSF Health, UNC Health and Prisma Health are already using the company’s technology, according to a statement. At these institutions, Conversa has provided symptom checking and triage, check-ins with quarantined patients and delivery of lab results to millions of patients. They gave also screened hundreds of thousands of employees over the last month.

The screener was developed in conjunction with the University of California San Francisco Health.

“We needed to safely screen while minimizing delays for our employees, visitors, and others caring for patients,” said Aaron Neinstein, MD, Director of Clinical Informatics, UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation, in a statement. “Conversa’s virtual care and communication solution was flexible and scalable to help us create a user-centered solution, while modernizing our processes for how we engage and care for our employees. It’s been working great for us and we’re extending use to our employees across the UCSF campus – I think employers across many other industries will find themselves wanting to use a tool like Conversa to help create a safe workplace and ensure they have healthy employees.”