Chicago, IL, March 26, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Given the rapid spread of COVID-19, the need to accurately document and diagnose new and suspected cases of the novel coronavirus is critical to healthcare providers, their communities, and the patients they serve. Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO) today announced it has created IMO Precision COVID-19 Sets aimed at helping providers with workflow and cohort management connected to the novel coronavirus.

Providers need every tool available to effectively identify COVID-19 patients and to monitor the effectiveness of their care protocols. IMO Precision COVID-19 Sets will be made available to all existing customers, completely free of charge, helping them to: 

• Leverage health information systems to identify and monitor patients who have documented COVID-19 exposures, symptoms and diagnoses; and
• Analyze the effectiveness of an institution’s COVID-19 management protocol.

IMO Precision COVID-19 Sets contains two value sets specific to COVID-19. Sometimes referred to as “groupers,” value sets are lists of codes and descriptions which allow for the grouping of patients by a specific disease or issue and then analyze their treatment and track progress. Ensuring terms and codes are current is critical for successful value set use for identifying an accurate patient cohort, and the rapidly evolving nature of the current crisis makes it difficult to stay on top of all symptoms, terms, and descriptors relevant to COVID-19 care. By creating and maintaining IMO Precision COVID-19 Sets, IMO helps providers remain focused on direct patient care while still being able to easily document, track, and analyze their response to the novel coronavirus.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime crisis for society. By providing up to the minute, clinically-accurate and specific terminology, mapped to the rapidly changing international standard codes, IMO is ensuring that governments and institutions have access to the right information as quickly as possible to fight the virus,” said Andrew S. Kanter, MD MPH, Chief Medical Officer at IMO. “Leveraging specific value sets, we speed the process of grouping together patients who have various forms of COVID-19 disease and those who are suspected of or exposed to the disease.”

IMO has been engaged in the response to COVID-19 since early this year. On January 30, IMO released 15 new descriptors to help clinicians more accurately record diagnoses related to COVID-19. As of now the number of descriptors is at 154. The new descriptors of problems and diagnoses will help providers accurately document when a patient has been exposed to COVID-19, is suspected to be infected, and has a confirmed infection. Once imported into the EHR, select terms enable providers to subsequently identify and analyze this patient population with the IMO Precision COVID-19 Sets.

“At a critical time like this, IMO’s 25 years of experience working within the healthcare IT industry provides consistency to our process. Our technological capabilities and ability to automate complex processes enables us to deliver our content both with speed and the quality our customers expect from us,” said Ivana Naeymi-Rad, Chief Operating Officer. “IMO was built to help providers more easily capture the most pertinent information at the point of care, which requires a strong synergy between our terminology and technology teams to deliver the most valuable solutions quickly to our customers.”

IMO has a long history working with EHR vendors to accurately code medical diagnosis. Due to its vast experience with SNOMED, ICD-10 codes, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updates and guidelines, IMO is uniquely positioned to respond to this type of situation. IMO’s recent update is aligned to the new ICD-10-CM diagnosis code, “U07.1, COVID-19,” which is effective April 1, 2020.

The download is available as of 5:00 p.m. on March 26, 2020 CDT. Learn more about Precision COVID-19 Sets here.

About IMO

At IMO, we are dedicated to powering care as you intended through a platform that is intelligent, intuitive, and intentional. Used by more than 4,500 hospitals and 500,000 physicians daily, IMO’s clinical interface terminology (CIT) forms the foundation for healthcare enterprise needs including effective management of EHR problem lists, accurate documentation, and the mapping of over 2.4 million clinician-friendly terms across 24 different code systems.

We offer a portfolio of products that includes terminologies and value sets that are clinically vetted, always current, and maintenance-free. This aligns to provider organizations’ missions, EHR platforms’ inherent power, and the evolving vision of the healthcare industry while ensuring accurate care documentation and administrative codes. Clinicians can get back to being clinicians, health systems can get reimbursed, and patients can more easily engage in their own care. As intended.