Montco Launches New Tech To Find Nursing Home Coronavirus Cases

NORRISTOWN, PA — Montgomery County is partnering with a technology company in an effort to more quickly track down coronavirus cases in local nursing homes, they announced over the weekend.

Many of the Montgomery County residents who have died from coronavirus were living in long-term care facilities, including clusters of fatalities in places like Upper Gwynedd, which has seen 17 deaths, and Springfield, which has seen 26 deaths, as of Tuesday afternoon.

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The county will have the use of services from Real Time Medical Systems, which says they provide around the clock electronic monitoring and infectious disease surveillance of nursing facilities around the county.

The company has volunteered to share their data, and officials are hopeful that the live look at collective symptoms, as they are being reported, will help them to immediately identify potential clusters of cases, and respond with appropriate isolation measures.

"By having automated, early access to all of today’s medical information we hope to be able to identify outbreaks days earlier,” Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said in a statement. "We can focus limited resources and equipment, and hopefully save lives of patients and staff."

A total of 306 patients at Montgomery County nursing homes have coronavirus, and 166 staff members are infected, as of late Monday.

Specifically, the surveillance identifies early warning signs like changes in temperature, respiratory rate, cough, and shortness of breath.

Montgomery County is the first county in the state to obtain this sort of data access, officials said.

The county has 91 deaths and 2,024 cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday afternoon.

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