TRAC19©: the web platform that streamlines triage
The global scenario has been strongly transformed by the Coronavirus pandemic (SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19) accelerating a series of initiatives related to the transformation of healthcare and determined the need to carry out active control activities in order to reduce the spread of the disease.
Global, national and regional recommendations, in addition to those of scientific societies, suggest applying triages to guarantee access in safety to health facilities and in particular for priority care (ie. oncological and onco hematological treatments).
The IRST IRCCS of Meldola, an excellent Italian oncological center, activated a triage model organized on two levels:
- telephone triage, the day before access to the Institute;
- physical triage, at access the same day as appointment.
Although the triage model was effective, it required a large amount of resources:
- 2,500 phone calls/week on average, 10 minutes/call on average, 417 hours/week (11.6 FTE)
- 700 accesses/day on average, 2 minutes/access on average, 116 hours/week (3.2 FTE)
Aivolution has developed TRAC19©, a web application that supports triage operations, involves the patient directly in monitoring their health, and optimizes the use of resources to ensure greater safety in the hospital environment.
TRAC19© supports patients and caregivers as well as health personnel.
The day before a visit, patients and caregivers:
- access TRAC19© website
- select the healthcare facility
- assess their health status by filling in a questionnaire
- receive an encrypted QR code via email to be presented for access
The day of the visit, the healthcare personnel:
- accesses TRAC19© backoffice
- decrypts the encrypted QR code
- verifies self-certification
- grants access to the health facility
The IRST IRCCS of Meldola started using TRAC19© on 9th August 2021. The following results are expected at month 18:
- -65% phone calls in the telephone triage
- -25% hours for the physical triage
- 15,000+ TRAC19© users
TRAC19© has been awarded as Best Lean Idea by the Lean Healthcare & Lifescience Award.
Security and privacy measures
TRAC19© has been designed ground-up to maximise data security and privacy, considering compliance to EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) as well as optimisation of user experience.
When TRAC19© is first used on a device, an e-mail verification step is requested to ensure that messages are sent to the proper address: this step associates the address to the device without requiring a password or other authentication mechanisms.
Before filling the questionnaire, the user indicates which healthcare facilities will be able to read it, as well as the data processing consents to grant to each of them.
When the questionnaire is complete, all data is encrypted with a one-time key and embedded into the QR code mailed to the user, the servers only store the key needed for decryption: this ensures that data cannot be read by another user even in case of a shared mailbox or of a breach.
When an authorized user of a facility scans the QR code, TRAC19© checks that the facility was selected by the user before decrypting and showing questionnaire data.
E-mail addresses are stored server-side in encrypted form and deleted shortly after the corresponding questionnaire is expired.
Technology stack
The TRAC19© backend is developed in Python and based on the FastAPI framework. The frontend is based on the Vue.js framework. The stack runs on Amazon Web Services.
