Los Angeles County and its partner, Healthvana, have launched a digital contact tracing campaign designed to control community spread as California’s counties reach sobering new milestones in COVID-19 cases.

People with a positive test are now able to immediately and anonymously notify anyone with whom they have recently come in close contact, using their mobile smartphones.

By reducing COVID-19 exposure notifications from days to hours, officials hope to further reduce community spread by encouraging close contacts to quickly quarantine and obtain a free test.

This is only one aspect of the county’s extensive effort on contact tracing which is led by the Department of Public Health.

“This is a prime example of how to harness technology to help Angelenos immediately inform their contacts and help slow the spread of infection, especially as we see the rate of infections and hospitalizations rising in communities across the county,” said Dr. Clemens Hong, director of Whole Person Care with the Department of Health Services, which oversees the county’s testing sites.

“By rapidly alerting people who may have been exposed to the virus so they can use that information to isolate themselves and protect their loved ones, we can make big strides in slowing progression and reducing the terrible impacts of COVID illness,” Hong said.

L.A. County has partnered with Healthvana since April 2020, which already delivers test results for county-operated sites.

How Digital Contact Tracing Works

Test result notifications are sent to your mobile phone via text message or email the moment the lab processes the sample. With this added feature, people who receive a positive test result can easily click a link within the web-based patient portal to enter contact information for any recent close contacts.

These close contacts instantly receive a notification from Healthvana alerting them that they may have been exposed to COVID-19 with links to resources, including locations where they can schedule a free COVID-19 test.

“Patients are the most underutilized resource in healthcare and L.A. County is the first to empower their community to be part of the solution in this way to slow the spread of COVID-19,” said Ramin Bastani, CEO of Healthvana. “Millions of test results later, we know people prefer to use their phones when it comes to COVID-19 – on average, patients access their results in less than 30 minutes. Now we have a chance to reduce exposure notifications from a few days to a few hours.”

The digital contact tracing feature will be initially rolled out to county-operated testing sites. There are currently more than 180 total testing sites across the region which include county-operated sites, city of Los Angeles-operated sites, state-operated sites and locations run by community clinics, pharmacies, and various other testing partners.

Healthvana has delivered more than 750,000 COVID-19 test results to county-operated testing sites since late April. L.A. County was one of the first counties to deliver test results via Healthvana, which has been proven successful: 50% of individuals view test results in 10 minutes or less; 75% view their test results in one hour or less; and 90% view their test results in four hours or less.

About the Department of Health Services

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services is the second largest municipal health system in the nation. Through its integrated system of 27 health centers and four hospitals – and expanded network of community partner clinics – DHS annually provides direct care for 600,000 unique patients, employs over 23,000 staff, and has an annual budget of over $6.2 billion. To learn more, visit www.dhs.lacounty.gov.

About Healthvana

Healthvana’s mission is to help eliminate COVID-19 using technology. The mobile patient platform has delivered over 3.5 million HIPAA-compliant COVID-19 test results. Test results are delivered the moment labs are done processing the sample, and people have permanent access to results and vaccination records for sharing with physicians, work, schools and more. Since 2015, Healthvana has simplified the delivery of patient health information for faster behavior change. Healthvana works with states and local government, labs, employers, and schools to reduce costs, simplify COVID-19 testing and contact tracing management, and improve community engagement. To learn more, visit www.healthvana.com.