Automated Messaging Helps Penn Medicine Save Lives at Home

An automated messaging platform helped Penn medicine save two lives per week during the early days of the pandemic by allowing care providers to monitor patients at home. An automated messaging platform that helped Penn Medicine monitor patients with COVID-19 at home is being credited with saving two lives per week during the early days of the pandemic.

The platform, called COVID Watch, sent AI-enhanced text messages to patients twice a day, asking about their symptoms. If patients reported worsening symptoms, they were sent follow-up questions, then called by designated clinical staff at the hospital, who could recommend hospitalization. According to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, nearly 20,000 patients have been monitored at home since the platform was launched on March 23, 2020. In the eight months after the program’s launch, only three of the 3,448 patients died within 30 days of enrollment, compared to 12 patients in a similar-sized group who weren’t in the program, and five died within 60 days, compared to 16 outside the program.