AI Could Be the Answer to Alarm Fatigue

Abbott Laboratories has begun hiring for facilities in Illinois and Maine that will make the pharmaceutical firm’s new rapid COVID-19 test.

The Illinois site is expected to fill 2,000 new positions. The plant in Westbrook, Maine will hire 1,200 workers. Most of the jobs will be temporary, but are likely to extend well into next year based on the company’s announced production schedule.

Abbott was contracted by the federal government to produce 150 million tests at $5 each. Called BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card, Abbott says the test delivers reliable results in just 15 minutes. The most commonly available current tests take two or more days for results, sometimes even up to a week, depending on where the test was done.

Like other tests, Abbott’s requires taking a nasal swab. Trained workers activate the test kit, inserting the swab into a “test well” in a credit card-sized cardboard test card. Results are ready in 15 minutes. The presence of a COVID infection shows up as two pink/purple lines.

Use of the test is intended for individuals “suspected of COVID-19 by their healthcare provider within the first seven days of symptom onset,” said the Food and Drug Administration.

The test was fast tracked by the FDA, getting emergency approval on August 26. The following day, the government announced the deal to acquire a supply of the tests for $750 million.

Abbott has also created Navica, an app allowing those who test negative to demonstrate their COVID status. Abbott says it will serve as a “digital ‘boarding pass’ that can be scanned to enter organizations and other places where people gather.”

Most of the new jobs don’t require any technical experience. Abbott said it will provide all the training production workers will need.

Photo provided by
United Nations COVID-19 Response

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Nurses and doctors who treat patients with COVID-19 are rightfully celebrated as heroes of the pandemic. First responders, hospital orderlies, janitors, housekeepers and medical workers playing a support role in the fight against the virus are being cheered loudly and publicly and on social media posts worldwide.

Those are the ones we see and hear about daily. Yet there is another group of professionals laboring behind the scenes, often remotely, whose vital work goes unsung. These are the case managers — nurses or social workers in most cases — who, explains Wil Shelton, “coordinate with physicians, nurses, mental health and insurance companies, and family and friends of the patient, their client.”

His wife is one.

“Case managers are in a battle behind the scenes, huddling daily to plan for the next six months. But mostly these men and women are alone, hunched over computers in trenches of their bedrooms or living rooms, making frantic phone calls, staying focused on the needs of patients even when their families need them, too.”

In just one week, Shelton says, his wife helped cancer patients unable to see their oncologist because offices are closed. She worked with the family of a 2-year-old asthma patient discharged home because his doctor’s office, too, was closed. Then there were the terminally ill patients who contracted COVIC-19 and had to be isolated from family when, he notes sadly, “time with them matters most.”

That doesn’t even include the administrative tasks like finding an empty bed, handling records, tracking patients and hunting down busier-than-ever doctors and nurses.

“All of these situations bring tears, confusion, fear, and loss — all of which my wife, and case managers like her, are supposed to alleviate from a remote location with little support and in the middle of a system plagued by glitches and breakdowns,” says Shelton.

“Please,” he ends his post, speaking to all of us, “Be kind to your case worker. He or she is making a great sacrifice to ensure the best outcome for you.”

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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