ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: The unprecedented covid-19 pandemic has shown the weaknesses of health systems and opened new spaces for e-health and telemedicine. Recent literature states that chatbots, if implemented effectively, could be useful tools for quickly sharing information, promoting healthy behaviors, and helping reduce the psychological burden of isolation. The aim of this project is to develop and test a secure and reliable computerized decision support system (CDSS) in web-app and evaluate its use, usability and its outputs in a pre-specified way. METHODS: A multidisciplinary team was recruited to plan and design, based on the SMASS medical CDSS, the scenarios of the COVID-Guide web-app, a self-triage system for patients with suspected covid-19. The output data for the period May-September 2020 from Germany were analyzed. RESULTS: During the period under review, the total number of consultations in Germany was 96,012. 3,415 (3.56%) consultations indicated the need for immediate evaluation, by activating the emergency service (calling an ambulance) - 1,942, equal to 2.02% - or by advising the patient to go to hospital - 1,743, equal to 1.54%. CONCLUSIONS: Data seems to show good usability and a consistent number of consultations carried out. Regular use of COVID-Guide could help collect epidemiological data on the spread of (suspected) covid-19 cases, easily and quickly available in all countries where the tool will be used. Using the SSDC could help reduce the load on operators. Furthermore, the use of anonymous and geolocatable clinical data together with the generation of alerts and indicators produced by COVID-Guide could become a useful tool for epidemiological surveillance in the future phases of the pandemic (Telemedical Syndromic Surveillance).