Mohali Administration augments manual tele-calling with IVR calls
Mohali, May 2, 2021:
In order to keep a tab on the health status of growing number of COVID positive patients, the District Administration has augmented the existing system of making manual calls with IVR calling in the district, informed Deputy Commissioner, Girish Dayalan.
Earlier, a team of tele-callers under the supervision of the district COVID Patient Tracking Officer (CPTO) used to contact each COVID Positive Patient in Home Isolation and made calls to them daily to take a health status update. But, with over 9000 active cases coupled with the daily heavy surge in the number of positive cases, keeping a tab manually has become challenging ; we have complemented the calling system with the available technology and roped in an NGO- Step One who will support administration in the contacting and monitoring COVID Patients in Home Isolation via IVR calls.
The system will automatically fetch the data of COVID positive patients in home isolation and call each number. The patient will have to reply to questions asked and update their status as assessed by themselves. Based on patient replies the system will flag as Red those needing immediate attention and they will subsequently be contacted by the team of doctors for further treatment.
However, it has been observed that generally people either do not respond to automated calls or disconnect them without answering appropriately. The system generated IVR calls are multi-lingual so person can choose the language he/she is comfortable with and respond accordingly. Making an appeal to COVID-19 patients in Home Isolation, Deputy Commissioner said that health follow up is in the interest of patients so they should respond to the call and update their health status as and when asked.
Ravjot Kaur SP Rural-cum- COVID Patient Tracking Officer (CPTO) for the district said that monitoring of Home Isolation cases of positive COVID - 19 patients is required to be done efficiently and diligently in order to ensure they have proper information and are able to escalate any health related problems that they might face during the Home Isolation period. So, to ensure coordination and expeditious response so that each COVID patient receives the timely care, augmenting manual system with technology driven automated one, is the need of the hour; people should respond to IVR calls and ‘Help us to Help them’.