In the COVID-19 battle, did we leave our best players on the bench?

Gus Malezis

When it comes to battling COVID-19, did we leave our best players on the bench? We have the world's best technologists, the most sophisticated capabilities in the U.S., and yet, when the pandemic hit, it seems like we focused solely on throwing manpower at the problem, instead of technology which is proven to improve safety and productivity, and reduce costs.

Maybe that was the right thing to, but that still begs the question: were our best players sitting this out? And what could we have accomplished if we had pulled technology into the battle, which now seems to be a protracted one at that?

How did tech get left out? Did our Government inadvertently forget about it, or was it something else? Regardless of the impetus, here’s what we know: when the pandemic hit, many technology companies remained focused on selling instead of offering up their tech and expertise to assist customers on the front lines.

We heard from our customers that one tech company is charging a significant amount to scale-up quickly for remote access in response to COVID-19. Another tech company said they wouldn’t consider any variations in pricing, terms, or support. And, sadly, another tech company is dissolving the Inflection partnership for EPCS identity proofing, leaving customers scrambling for an alternative while dealing with the pandemic.

So, what did Imprivata do differently? We stayed true to our mantra, “Don’t let technology get in the way.” We believe that technology should work like antilock brake technology: it’s safe, it’s inexpensive, and it’s silent - helping us without forcing us to do anything different.

How did we do that?

  1. We didn’t sell. To let our customers remain focused on getting their situation under control in order to focus on patients and keep them alive, we stepped in and offered no-cost licenses of our various technologies. To date, we’ve supported 180+ customers with 735,000+ no-cost licenses and customers have been very grateful that we gave them that room to handle this emergency.
  2. We stayed out of our customers way. As our customers were being overwhelmed, we backed off and aggregated all of our advice and best practices into a COVID-19 webpage with usable, technical use cases from 20+ customers who are using innovative technology to fight COVID. We offered this resource to customers at no-cost. The web page cases created an opportunity for people to learn from each other and customers found these use-cases immensely helpful.
  3. We all turned into customer support engineers. We made ourselves available to our customers, whenever they needed us, offering free services, consulting, and anything else we could provide to help them stay focused on patients.

Additionally, Imprivata solutions have helped our customers to mitigate risk and manage response with methods to:

  • Reduce the risk of spreading infectious disease with no-touch workflows;
  • Enable a seamless experience for new and remote clinical workflows;
  • Support low-touch, remote implementation and managed services; and
  • Improve security and maintain compliance by adapting digital identity strategies and solutions.

We’ve done our part to bring technology into the COVID-19 battle and we urge other tech companies to follow suit. Health IT can, and should, do so much more to support our customers on the front lines.