Massachusetts, USA based DaytoDay Health has partnered with Heal Foundation to deliver first-ever home patient management program for the COVID-19 patients in India for free. The program is a comprehensive digital-first care management program that enables patients to be safely, effectively, and affordably managed at their homes. The post-diagnosis care management program for COVID-19 is applicable for patients who have either a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19, and are not critical, i.e. requiring ICU-level care.

Speaking about the partnership Dr. Swadeep Srivastava, Founder, Heal Foundation, said, “World is going through the crisis of the century. In these gloomy times, we all need to come together to fight the situation.  The healthcare system in India is not well equipped to handle community infection and facts such as only 1 doctor per 1800 population, only 1.7 nurses available per thousand population, only 0.9 hospital beds per 1000 population, mere 100,000 ICU beds and 40,000 ventilators can vouch for it. Therefore, it becomes essential to prevent the community transmission of COVID 19 and manage maximum patients at home to relieve the burden on the healthcare system and preventing cross infections.”

Rajiv Misra, SVP India operation, DaytoDay Health, said, “Public Health England has categorised COVID-19 patients into 3 categories: Category 1 - Require immediate admission, Category 2 - Home isolation with active health monitoring, Category 3 - Home isolation with health advice. Only 5 percent of the patients fall into the first category. Remaining 95 percent can be managed from home. However, Home isolation is stressful and can lead to patients not following, breaking the isolation, and seeking healthcare outside thus putting both healthcare workers and the elderly population at risk.”

Prem Sharma, CEO, DaytoDay Health said, “We have joined hands with Heal Foundation for the noble cause of fighting against COVID-19. Both Heal Foundation and DaytoDay were working toward similar goals and hence we decided to join forces. People can reach us through our direct websites or logon to our joint website www.covidfighters.in. Our COVID-19 Care Management Program has been designed keeping our global care management program as its core. The program can help in managing category 2 and category 3 patients effectively and play an important role in preventing community transmission of COVID-19. During these tough times, as our CSR duty, we have decided to make this program available to Indian COVID-19 patients free of cost through our software and a virtual care team, which comprises of a what we call as a dedicated ‘care coach’, a well-trained registered nurse, who serves as the single point of contact to deliver the care program, as well as clinicians and psychologists that provide guidance along the patient’s recovery journey.”

"The program has been designed with the goals to help GOI respond to the anticipated large number of COVID-19 cases who will require treatment, free-up the maximum possible inpatient capacity, support the medical staff on the frontlines and maximise their availability, reduce any source of panic or anxiety among patients and their families during the recovery process through end-to-end patient engagement; and has four components: symptom management, engaging education, psychological support, and streamlined communication”, Mr. Sharma added.

"Isolation and home treatment of the COVID comes with its own challenges and needs a different perspective of care. The traditional approach, where a person goes to a clinic, lab, or hospital, will not work in this global pandemic. Not only we have to help the patients but we also have to protect our clinicians to avoid the compounding spread of the disease, therefore, this COVID-19 patient management program is the need of the hour”, Dr. Srivastava added.