Stronger Together: Social Infrastructure for Community Health
Extending health care to those isolated by COVID-19.
Project Overview
Updated March 31, 2023.
The Problem
Until 2020, healthcare depended largely on personal interactions. Visits to the doctor. Trips to the ER. Outpatient follow-ups after a hospital stay.
But a pandemic like COVID-19 makes this difficult at best and life-threatening in the case of large groups of patients like those with chronic disease, the elderly and the disabled.
Even visits to community centres for rehabilitation and disease management programs are impacted. The programs these patients attend after discharge from hospital include education, exercises, coaching and critical peer support. They include some form of monitoring and clinical evaluation so that potential issues can be detected before they drive complications and re-hospitalization.
How We Are Solving It
Supporting these kinds of patients is the goal of the Stronger Together: Social Infrastructure for Community Health project led by Curatio Networks in partnership with Cloud DX, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, Pacific Blue Cross, Wellness Garage, OnCall Health, Zu.com and Age-Well.
The project makes sure discharged patients receive personalized peer support, educational programs, daily tracking tools and monitoring by bringing together a privacy-compliant social network platform with remote medical-grade patient monitoring.
The social network operates like a Facebook platform built specifically for healthcare. Wearables and remote monitors that detect medical information can be integrated. Also, patients will participate in evidence-based programs at home, safe from COVID-19. The network will connect them to their hospital’s platform, to peers facing the same situation, and will provide feedback on their progress and health.
The project will support 25,000 patients and families each week by giving hospitals, doctors and community organizations a new way to deliver rehabilitation and disease management programs.
While Stronger Together will start with outpatient support tied to COVID-19, it plans to expand to include recovery programs in mental health, anxiety, return-to-work after short-term disability, as well as disease prevention and management.
The Result
This project focused on providing a solution for out-patients care at home during the pandemic and expanded RxPx’s platform to deliver peer support, coaching from nurses and experts, evidence-based health literacy programs, and daily check-ins for both patients and families. Thirteen ‘communities’ have been established within the RxPx platform in a variety of areas including stroke recovery, respiratory health and well-being, prostate cancer, parenting during COVID-19, keeping mentally strong with multiple myeloma, disability and physical activity, cardiovascular health and wellbeing, COVID-19 survivors and long haulers, and 4+2 diabetes reversal strategy and survey results from clinicians and patients show a 92% overall program approval rating.
Project Lead
Project Partners
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"This project has been transformative for us. It's created very valuable partnerships, we've more than doubled our team size in the last quarter, we've signed new clients , we are creating new IP and we've raised our profile."
CEO, Curatio Read Lynda's Blog Post