Cantabria eases Covid data collection with an app

The digital tool is aimed at healthcare professionals in the autonomous region

The government website of the Spanish autonomous region of Cantabria announced on 8 July that its Health Ministry has launched a new application for the automated reading of antigen tests through smartphones. The app is available for healthcare professionals and for other qualified personnel from the private or socio-healthcare environment, such as nursing homes, and will soon be available throughout the whole regional healthcare network.

Simplifying epidemiological data collection

Thanks to AI vision, the app automatically reads the COVID antigen test result and also captures the identity of the patient from the ID or health card. It then uploads the data to the unified laboratory management system of Cantabria, updating the epidemiological surveillance system in the region.

The Minister of Health, Miguel Rodríguez, highlighted that “with this measure, the Cantabria Government Department of Health is firmly committed to the digital transformation of our processes and the improvement of the tools available to health professionals to facilitate them their daily work, and also in this case, with a significant improvement in the traceability and agility of our COVID epidemiological surveillance system”.

Led by the Ministry’s General Directorate of Digital Transformation and Relations with Users, in collaboration with the Cantabrian Health Service, this project represents a significant improvement in the traceability and speed with which COVID antigen test results are incorporated into the system of information from the unified laboratories of Cantabria. In this way, the process of epidemiological surveillance and contact tracing is highly optimized.

According to the general director of Digital Transformation, Santiago García, this new app will represent a very important improvement for the COVID epidemiological surveillance system of Cantabria since it will allow the rapid detection of new cases and accelerate the screening of close contacts in spikes and clusters of cases.

Initially configured for the nasopharyngeal sample antigen test currently in use in Cantabria, the application allows later adaptation to incorporate new types of tests when needed.