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The site maladiecoronavirus.fr divided by 8 unnecessary calls to 15

2020-08-12T17:42:58.341Z


After completing an online questionnaire, Internet users get a response that tells them whether they should see a doctor.


With 10 million visitors since its launch in March by doctors and volunteers from the high-tech sector, the sickiecoronavirus.fr website has more than proved its usefulness in helping the French in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic. Thanks to an online questionnaire, Internet users describe their symptoms. They then get a response that tells them whether or not they should see a doctor.

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“The consultation numbers have been incredible. They exceeded everything that could be expected, with peaks of thousands of connections per minute at times, reports Dr Fabrice Denis, site coordinator, oncologist at the Jean-Bernard Institute in Le Mans and associate professor of th -health at the University of Paris. We can also measure our success by noting that the site has made it possible to divide by 8 the number of unnecessary calls to the 15 call center. " A spectacular result, established from 4 million connections, and which is the subject of a scientific publication with researchers from the Pasteur Institute, being reread by a journal.

In March, call centers on the 15th were receiving 120 calls for each hospitalization for Covid-19. An unbearable saturation, which also prevents the treatment of other serious emergencies than those related to Covid-19. "We have had the testimony of cases of infarction which had to wait two hours before being taken care of by the 15th", reports Fabrice Denis.

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If the site very quickly had the support of the Ministry of Health, its birth is in no way a government initiative. It is the result of a very strong mobilization, entirely voluntary, of doctors, pulmonologists, resuscitators and infectious diseases, of the Pasteur Institute, of the AP-HP. They joined forces with high-tech and internet specialists, motivated by the urgency of the unique health crisis that the country was experiencing in this month of March. "The project started on March 7 or 8, and the site was online two weeks later, it was extremely fast" , enthuses Fabrice Denis.

At the beginning of March, Professor Arnaud Fontanet, from the Institut Pasteur, has just been appointed to the government's Scientific Council. He was then tasked with seeing how digital solutions could help manage the epidemic. The Ministry of Health suggested the name of Dr Denis, who had stood out in 2017 for an application for monitoring patients with lung cancer which had halved mortality.

Rebound in July

“Arnaud Fontanet called me, and we decided to work together,” says the oncologist. We mobilized our contacts each on our own, and, 48 hours later, we were in teleconference with 90 people, doctors, internet specialists and teleconsultation companies to launch the project. ” In March, the epidemic began to flare up in Europe, but the disease was still very poorly understood at the time. French specialists are building the first questionnaires on symptoms from the first clinical case studies published by Chinese doctors, mainly in the Wuhan region.

“The forms were drawn up with specialists, but nothing would have been possible without the technical teams, who worked for free,” says the site coordinator. The site was developed by Kelindi, a start-up from Lille, with the Denier Cri team in Paris, big data processing is done by Adobis, a company from Grenoble, and hosting is done by Docaposte. "Initially, everything was done pro bono, then fortunately we had the financial support of companies and insurers within the Digital Alliance for the Covid."

The site experienced its large peaks in connections during containment, but, after a low in June, activity resumed in July. A very clear sign of the resumption of the epidemic in certain departments, with many symptoms now characteristic, such as loss of taste and smell.

Source: lefigaro

All tech articles on 2020-08-12

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