A Report on Statistics of an Online Self-screening Platform for COVID-19 and Its Effectiveness in Iran
| Autor: | Erfan Ghasemi, Bahman Damerchilu, Kosar Jamshidi, Farshad Farzadfar, Sina Azadnajafabad, Hossein Zokaei, Abbas Norouzinejad, Hossein Erfani, Pouya Fathi, Bagher Larijani, Shohreh Naderimagham, Ashkan Mehregan, Mohammad Mehdi Gouya, Negar Rezaei, Reza Malekzadeh, Nima Fattahi, Sahar Saeedi Moghaddam, Hamidreza Jamshidi, Mehrdad Azmin, Esmaeil Mohammadi |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
medicine.medical_specialty Health (social science) Leadership and Management Population Disease Telehealth Management Monitoring Policy and Law Representativeness heuristic 03 medical and health sciences symbols.namesake 0302 clinical medicine Health Information Management Pandemic medicine 030212 general & internal medicine Poisson regression education education.field_of_study business.industry Health Policy Public health 030104 developmental biology Family medicine symbols Emerging infectious disease business |
| Zdroj: | International Journal of Health Policy and Management. |
| ISSN: | 2322-5939 |
| DOI: | 10.34172/ijhpm.2020.252 |
| Popis: | Background: The most recent emerging infectious disease, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is pandemic now. Iran is a country with community transmission of the disease. Telehealth tools have been proved to be useful in controlling public health disasters. We developed an online self-screening platform to offer a population-wide strategy to control the massive influx to medical centers. Methods: We developed a platform operating based on given history by participants, including sex, age, weight, height, location, primary symptoms and signs, and high risk past medical histories. Based on a decision-making algorithm, participants were categorized into four levels of suspected cases, requiring diagnostic tests, supportive care, not suspected cases. We made comparisons with Iran STEPs (STEPwise approach to Surveillance) 2016 study and data from the Statistical Centre of Iran to assess population representativeness of data. Also, we made a comparison with officially confirmed cases to investigate the effectiveness of the platform. A multilevel mixed-effects Poisson regression was used to check the association of visiting platform and deaths caused by COVID-19. Results: About 310 000 individuals participated in the online self-screening platform in 33 days. The majority of participants were in younger age groups, and males involved more. A significant number of participants were screened not to be suspected or needing supportive care, and only 10.4% of males and 12.0% of females had suspected results of COVID-19. The penetration of the platform was assessed to be acceptable. A correlation coefficient of 0.51 was calculated between suspected results and confirmed cases of the disease, expressing the platform’s effectiveness. Conclusion: Implementation of a proper online self-screening tool can mitigate population panic during wide-spread epidemics and relieve massive influx to medical centers. Also, an evidence-based education platform can help fighting infodemic. Noticeable utilization and verified effectiveness of such platform validate the potency of telehealth tools in controlling epidemics and pandemics. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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