The platform, named Olmsted Partnership for Assistance and Lifelines, or OPAL, will allow health care providers, social service agencies and homeless patients to communicate with each other, making it easier for that patient's care to be more coordinated between different services.
"We are delighted to partner with PathCheck Foundation to develop OPAL," said Beth Kangas, ZVMS executive director. "We see so many uses for a communication and care coordination platform. OPAL will allow us to provide care and housing readiness for the individuals we work with in street medicine, recuperative care ('medical respite') and hospital discharge."
The development of the platform will be overseen by The Team of Advisors Bringing Lived Experience, or The TABLE, an advisory group made up of people who have experienced homelessness.
ZVMS, Southeast Minnesota's professional organization for physicians and physicians in training, coordinates a street medicine program that brings medical care directly to unhoused community members and trains medical providers in caring for people outside of the clinic setting.
"We are thrilled to collaborate with ZVMS Street Medicine on this transformative project," Graham Dodge, president of the PathCheck Foundation, said. "Our mission is to create and leverage new technologies that improve health outcomes and public health equity, and OPAL is a perfect example of how that all comes together."
The OPAL platform development project is financed by a Mayo Clinic-funded Community Grant.
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