Cohealo to Mitigate COVID-19 Ventilator Shortages by Sharing Between Hospitals

Cohealo, a platform for health systems to track and share medical equipment, today announced that the company will begin onboarding customers to their national ventilator sharing network. The solution will enable health systems to monitor capacity and dynamically mobilize ventilators to the hospitals that need them most.

Ventilators are in critical supply from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nationally, there are estimated to be as few as 100,000 ventilators with only an additional 12,700 in the strategic stockpile. The CDC has predicted that 160 million to 214 million people in the United States could be infected during the pandemic, with models projecting a need for more than 250,000 ventilators to combat the outbreak.

“The time for sharing is now,” said Todd Rothenhaus, M.D., Cohealo’s chief executive officer. “To date, the pandemic has not hit every part of the nation equally. Optimizing ventilators between geographically disparate locations has the potential to stretch existing ventilator capacity to reduce morbidity and save lives.”

Cohealo has conducted more than 5,000 shares of 127 different equipment types, with expertise in mobilizing even the most delicate of assets, including microscopes, lasers, and surgical robots. The company retains 99.9% move reliability with specialized workflows that diminish the potential for breakage or delays.

“With almost a decade of experience tracking and sharing medical equipment for some of the largest health systems in the country, our team is poised to solve this challenge,” said Brett Reed, Cohealo’s chief operating officer. “Hospitals have an urgent need for ventilators, and we have logistics in place to get these assets to patients quickly."

Using the Cohealo platform, hospitals can upload inventory, track usage, and develop an operating picture of available capacity across all participating facilities. When there are spikes in demand, the system selects the best candidates for sharing and quantities to be moved.

End-to-end logistics is supported directly in the platform, including waybill creation, mobilization procedures, and chain of custody. This process ensures equipment is transported safely and that ventilators are returned to point of origin. Additionally, health systems have access to a digital equipment catalogue that contains profiles of each ventilator type, ensuring all the relevant make/model details and OEM manuals are available for respiratory therapists and biomedical teams.

“Together, we have the ability to maximize the use of ventilators during this crisis. We have tremendous capacity as a healthcare system to get doctors the resources they need,” said Rothenhaus.

To join Cohealo’s national ventilator sharing network, visit https://cohealo.com/

About Cohealo

Based in Boston, Cohealo is recognized as the first company to bring the sharing economy to healthcare. Using Cohealo, health systems can track equipment utilization, identify candidates for sharing, and save money by right-sizing their inventory during the capital planning process. Cohealo optimizes equipment for health systems across the United States and for the National Healthcare Service in the United Kingdom in partnership with DHL. Cohealo has been named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies List and CNBC’s Disruptor 50.

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