Found With a Trace

What We’ve Been Missing

By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist#TheIncrementalist

On this episode I spoke with Tom Goodmanson CEO of Calabrio (@Calabrio), a customer focused contact tracing solution provider that has been working with state and local health and government technology leaders to rapidly build out contact tracing operations and manage the agent workforce.

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Tom has a very personal connection to contact tracing – he sat next to a Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) infected person on a flight back from London to the US and that experience gave him a first hand window into the challenges of contact tracing and gave him his first incremental insight to connect the activity with his own business area of call centers that demand a human touch.

We face an increasing problem as our COVID19 case count increases at near meteoric rates with associated positive tests that demand we follow with appropriate tracing. Currently, many parts of the countries and public health systems are overwhelmed and struggling to cope and while there are many people stepping in to fill the void as Tom points out this requires a very delicate and humanistic approach. Technology can help support this by improving scheduling to match the 24/7 needs and pulling in additional data as part of the reach out to contacts including location. They then apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to help analyze the data to derive insights on success and learning opportunities especially as they scale up additional people.

But technology only takes you so far and the concept of phone-based applications that will save the contact tracing problem is not practical for many we reasons as we discuss. Listen in to hear his incremental insights that include the importance of a humanistic approach and great “bedside manner”.

About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.

This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.