News From Stockholm about COVID-19 thanks to Per-Olof Egnell of the eHealth Innovation Centre, Luleå University of Technology

The Region Stockholm last week launched a web-based service that helps citizens with covid-19 symptoms to assess whether they can take care of the home or need to call the health care system for a closer diagnosis.

The search pressure immediately became very large. Several other regions have chosen to order a variant of the self-assessment test.

The service is provided by the health technology company Chorus. The delivery requires an unusually fast project start, development and implementation.

“We were one of the companies that were asked by the Region Stockholm if we were interested in developing and implementing a self-assessment function. Within the course of a few hours after the Region Stockholm went out with the request on March 13, we were told that we would be given the assignment to deliver the service”, says Dan Lind, CEO of Chorus, to Digital Health.

 Chorus immediately started developing the website and its underlying features.

“We worked nonstop with medical expertise and other employees in the Stockholm region to get the solution in place”, says Dan Lind.

What were the challenges for Chorus in connection with this mission?

“The time aspect. It was extremely urgent as we knew that every minute and hour was of great importance to both patients and the healthcare staff. For patients, the service means, among other things, that their concerns can be reduced and for the healthcare staff they release resources by reducing the pressure on physical receipts and reducing the number of telephone calls to 1177 “Care guide” and medical information”, says Dan Lind. He continues: ” There are high demands on the technical stability of the solution and the ability to scale it up at high search pressure.”

 The service was launched on March 18.

“After lunch on March 20, we passed a million self-assessment tests”, says Dan Lind.

 Chorus has received requests from other regions to make a variant of the region Stockholm’s self-assessment function for coronavirus and covid-19.

 – We have in recent days put the solution into production in both Region Skåne and Region Halland. We are preparing for new assignments, and to deliver without delay.

 Dan Lind and the employees at Chorus are currently in a situation with unusually high production rates.

“We work around the clock, in principle, and our developers are constantly available because we have to be able to handle any changes in the existing solution in Stockholm and to make new deliveries. We simply have to deal with this promptly, since delays have such a huge impact on both patients and the healthcare staff”, says Dan Lind.