On May 7, 2020, Washington University in St. Louis announced that people with COVID-19 who are seen by Washington University physicians or BJC Medical Group providers, but not sick enough to be hospitalized, can be enrolled in an in-home health monitoring program.

With daily check-ins for each patient via smartphone app or phone call, the program helps medical professionals identify signs of worsening illness early so they can intervene and, ideally, keep patients out of the hospital.

COVID-19 patients are given the option of installing the My Chart app on their phone or receiving daily phone calls. My Chart is produced by Epic, the electronic medical records system used throughout the BJC network of hospitals. The app pings each patient every morning with a series of questions such as: What is your temperature? How is your cough? Do you have any shortness of breath? How is your appetite?

Those who choose to be called or who don’t respond to the app receive a telephone call from a person who asks the same questions.

The COVID monitoring program was developed collaboratively by the School of Medicine and BJC. A team of Washington University and BJC Medical Group physicians led by Schmidt spent a few days reading up on how physicians at other institutions have cared for COVID-19 patients. They combined those reports with their own expertise in infectious diseases, pulmonary and critical care medicine, or general medicine to develop a set of criteria that suggests a COVID-19 patient could be taking a turn for the worse.