CSU Pueblo announces partnership with Spartan Medical® to expand COVID-19 testing, tracing
Colorado State University Pueblo has partnered with Spartan Medical®, a medical technology company based in Maryland, to assist the school in ramping up COVID-19 testing and contact tracing. The company, along with the university, will be joined by NTT DATA Services in developing an app for expanding its capabilities for testing students and staff as well as expand contact tracing on campus.
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Joe McQueen
The Pueblo Chieftain
Colorado State University Pueblo has partnered with Spartan Medical®, a medical technology company based in Maryland, to assist the school in ramping up COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.
The company, along with the university, will be joined by NTT DATA Services in developing an app for expanding its capabilities for testing students and staff as well as expand contact tracing on campus. It allows the school to manage all of its COVID-19 data in one place, which includes appointment scheduling and gathering test results.
"Early in October, we recognized we were going to be dealing with COVID realities for a while and if we wanted a way to have some safe, in-person options for our students that we were going to need help," said Donna Souder Hodge, CSU Pueblo's chief strategy officer and COVID-19 director. "We needed partnerships with people who had digital solutions for us to do screenings, more robust testing protocols and do all of our testing in house."
CSU Pueblo found the amount of testing they were doing on campus wasn't enough and that it needed to find an organization that was doing testing and tracing at a more advanced level for things like governments and states.
CSU Pueblo needed an organization that could provide the university solutions.
"Our first meeting was right before Halloween, back when cases were really spiking in Pueblo. Our sense of urgency was very great," Hodge said. "We were able to set up our testing sites with Spartan's help by Jan. 4."
Spartan Medical® has contracts with the federal government providing solutions for things like orthopedics and spinal technologies to military doctors and medical staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Vince Proffitt, president and CEO of Spartan Medical®, said in March 2020 his company began working with medical experts to find a comprehensive COVID-19 testing solution.
"What we were able to offer CSU Pueblo is a screening and surveillance capability and a confirmatory PCR test to those who test positive," Proffitt said. "We partnered with NTT DATA. They wanted to get into the fight with us.
"We were able to create this patient screening dashboard for the administrators and everything is based on cell phone, tablet, or laptop for students and staff to have a smart badge solution and daily health survey."
The company is also providing the university with rapid antigen tests where the results only take 15 minutes to come back.
When a person on campus tests positive, the campus COVID-19 team is alerted from a secure dashboard, and they immediately begin the contact tracing process of any people the individual may have potentially exposed.
When people on campus are cleared, they receive a QR code that's either red or green that they can use to access facilities.
Proffitt was familiar with Southern Colorado since he attended the Air Force Academy. When the university was looking for a company that was solutions-based, he understood the challenges that Pueblo was facing.
"As we are bringing back more classes in the hybrid format, we don't want to contribute to the problem in our county. We want to be able to manage and control what we can on our campus and keep our people safe," said Hodge.
"That is what the partnership with Spartan has allowed us to do."
Chieftain Education Reporter Joe McQueen can be reached at jmcqueen@gannett.com or on Twitter @jmcqueennews
Spartan Medical® Contact Info:
Eric Jania, Director of COVID-19 Testing Solutions
201-230-1410 or 1-888-240-8091
Click Here to learn more about Spartan Medical®'s Comprehensive COVID-19 Testing Solutions
