ID.me Enables U.S. Health Care Community to Leverage Slack for Collective Intelligence, Expertise and Best Practices to Slow Pandemic

McLean, Va., March 24, 2020 – ID.me today announced a new real-time collaboration workspace on Slack, a channel-based messaging platform, for accredited health care providers across the U.S. to share information about COVID-19.

With the rapid spread of COVID-19, doctors and first-line health care professionals need and want access to collaborate with their peers and to share knowledge in real-time.

“The pandemic has changed the way we practice medicine in America,” said Dr. Jennifer Ellice, emergency room physician. “The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus requires that we evolve newer and faster ways to communicate with each other than we have in the past. We no longer have the luxury of waiting for peer reviewed data from medical journals, large medical trials or professional association guidelines. We need a platform where frontline providers can share information quickly and exchange evidence-based and anecdotal information in real time and across specialties; information about disease presentation, diagnosis, management and treatments. This new collaborative workspace gives us a way to have this conversation with each other quickly and responsibly.”

Doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners can share information and ask and answer questions about COVID-19 in the workspace. The workspace is designed to enable health care professionals to self-organize around specialties and relevant topics. Accredited health care providers can join the channel at no cost after completing a quick, online enrollment process at https://covid.slack.com, which already has 450 members less than 24-hours after opening.

“With COVID-19 infections continuing to rise, now is the time to come together and leverage the collective expertise of the U.S. health care community,” said ID.me CEO and founder Blake Hall. “With this new, real-time collaboration workspace on Slack, health care professionals can help each other with smart, actionable, accurate information and learnings.”

To ensure that only verified health care providers can access the channel, users are asked to perform a quick identity and medical credential verification process that typically takes just a few minutes and can be completed via a computer or mobile phone.

Healthcare providers wishing to share or learn best practices for responding to COVID-19 are encouraged to register at https://covid.slack.com.