Over one-hundred and thirty care homes within Greater Manchester are using a digital symptom tracker to support four-thousand residents by monitoring COVID-19.

The tracker app allows care home staff to input knowledge about a resident’s COVID-19 related symptoms, which can be shared with the resident’s NHS community response team and GP. Furthermore, this also enables the NHS to strictly monitor the situation in care homes across the area, thanks to a visible dashboard that presents the data at an aggregate level.

“Carehomes in Greater Manchester are using a digital symptom tracker to monitor COVID-19.“

The solution has been created as part of a partnership established by Health Innovation Manchester, including the Tameside Council, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, Safe Steps and local GPs.

GP and clinical lead for the project, Dr Saif Ahmed, stated: “The care homes data dashboard provides invaluable information to GPs about the most up to date status of their patients allowing proactive management and care for the most vulnerable in our society. By empowering carers, who know their residents best and can spot symptoms or signs of deterioration, to use the tracker we can easily identify those patients who need advanced care planning by picking up signs of deterioration as soon as they start to happen. Adding in the ability to record COVID-19 vaccination meant we can monitor care home residents who have consented and received the vaccine.”