COVID-19 | Wellian

Wellian's Voice Assistant Is Helping At-Risk Patients and Overloaded Health Care Workers Cope During COVID-19 Crisis

The COVID-19 outbreak requires everyone to reduce or even stop having face to face interactions.

This puts millions of at-risk patients with chronic conditions, that require regular monitoring and interactions with doctors, at extra risk.

These patients are at risk during a pandemic no matter what they do. If they stay home and skip their regular doctor visits, their underlying chronic condition could worsen. If they do go to a doctor's office to get care for their condition, they are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19.

For these patients their conditions make the likelihood of death from COVID-19 highly elevated. Seeing a doctor regularly for these patients is a life or death choice.

With COVID-19, the choice to see a doctor in person also could be a life or death choice.

A possible solution to this COVID-19 fueled dilemma is the Wellian voice-activated healthcare assistant.

The Wellian solution allows patients to stay home and still get the ongoing care they need for their chronic conditions. Using voice assistant devices such as Alexa Echo and Google Home Assistant, Wellian enables patients to remotely interact with their doctors to get the advice and care they need.

All the same interactions that normally happen in a doctor's office visit happen remotely through a series of remote question-and-answer interactions between patients and doctors. The Wellian system coordinates these remote doctor/patient interactions and transcribes and stores all the information for both patient and doctor.

The doctor uses Wellian to send the questions to their "safe-at-home" patients that they would normally ask during an office visit. These questions are played out to the patient through their home voice-assistant and the patient responses are recorded and transcribed. The doctor uses the recorded and transcribed responses to determine if the patient is doing Ok or if they need changes to the regimen of care. They can then record and send those changes or advice back to the patient using the Wellian system so the patient knows what to do.

This telemedicine scenario for patients with a chronic condition is a compelling solution for cost and convenience reasons in normal patient/care interactions. In the time of a pandemic it suddenly becomes a life-saving, life-preserving necessity for these patients and their doctors.

For patients with chronic conditions the likelihood of death from COVID-19 is highly elevated. Seeing a doctor regularly for these patients is a life or death choice. With COVID-19, the choice to see a doctor in person also could be a life or death choice.