Methods to engage patients in the modern clinic.

OBJECTIVE: To identify current patient and provider engagement methods that use technology in allergy and immunology clinics, in hospitals, and at home. DATA SOURCES: Apple App Store and Google searches for allergy and immunology technology applications and PubMed search of literature involving keywords of website, technology, electronic health record, medical devices, disparity in technology, coding for remote patient monitoring, and artificial intelligence. STUDY SELECTIONS: Studies that addressed the keywords were included and narrowed down based on their applicability in the allergy and immunology clinic. RESULTS: There has been rapid innovation in the digital health care space with expansion of electronic medical record services and the patient portal, creation of allergy and immunology-specific medical devices and applications with remote patient monitoring capabilities, and website and artificial intelligence development to interact with patients. CONCLUSION: These technological advances provide distinct advantages to the provider and patient but also have a burden of time for evaluation of the data for the provider and disparate access to certain technologies for patients. The development of these technologies has been fast-tracked since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. With the explosion in telehealth and medical device development, advancement of medical technology is not revealing any signs of slowing down. It is paving a new way to interact with patients in the future.

Systematic screening on admission for SARS-CoV-2 to detect asymptomatic infections.

The proportion of asymptomatic carriers of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains elusive and the potential benefit of systematic screening during the SARS-CoV-2-pandemic is controversial. We investigated the proportion of asymptomatic inpatients who were identified by systematic screening for SARS-CoV-2 upon hospital admission. Our analysis revealed that systematic screening of asymptomatic inpatients detects a low total number of SARS-CoV-2 infections (0.1%), questioning the cost-benefit ratio of this intervention. Even when the population-wide prevalence was low, the proportion of asymptomatic carriers remained stable, supporting the need for universal infection prevention and control strategies to avoid onward transmission by undetected SARS-CoV-2-carriers during the pandemic.