What’s your ‘COVID age’? Sanford has calculator for that

May 13, 2020

Profile by Sanford and health care tech company Everist Health have unveiled a new screening system to determine the risk of complications for COVID-19.

The COVIDAge Calculator is an opportunity “for people to identify their risk of hospitalization, ICU admission and mortality,” said Stephen Herrmann, Profile by Sanford’s chief healthy living expert.

How it works

Information such as body mass index, smoking habits, blood sugar and cholesterol levels helps identify someone’s “COVID age” and risk of complication.

“All of these health factors play a role, but sometimes it’s complex to understand how. You can plug in the numbers you know; it creates a COVID age. That age will help you place your risk,” Herrmann said in a statement.

“It’s adjusting your risk based on all those other health factors.”

Identifying risk factors

The calculator can be useful in determining which risk factors someone can control, Hermann said.

“A lot of them are linked to nutrition and diet. For a long-term solution, Profile is able to help build nutrition plans, activity plans and focus on lifestyle behaviors to lower those risk factors for this and other future issues that might arise.”

The COVIDAge calculator could be useful in “getting things back to normal,” he said.

“There’s an opportunity that even state governments and cities could use this to stratify risk when they’re thinking about reopening,” he added. “People at higher risk, or a higher COVID age, could be asked to shelter in place a little bit more, while people at lower risk might be able to return to work sooner.”

Complex risk factors

Profile by Sanford, part of Sanford Health, and Everist Health are leading the way on something “that’s never been tried before,” Hermann added.

“What we’re trying to do with Everist Health is simplify some of the complex risk factors out there. So when people have a variety of health conditions, they don’t necessarily understand real well how they interact,” he said.

“How does your A1C (diabetes blood test) interact with your blood pressure, interact with your age, in increasing or decreasing your risk? So trying to figure out a simple way to do that is really important and then what each of those independent risk factors contributes.”

The tool follows a similar heart age calculator that was unveiled earlier this year by Profile by Sanford and Everist Health. The AngioDefender combines several health markers to give an idea of a person’s overall cardiovascular health.

“Being able to translate that and pivot quickly from general cardiovascular health to COVID-19 risk is really impressive that they were able to do it so quickly,” Herrmann said.

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What’s your ‘COVID age’? Sanford has calculator for that

Profile by Sanford and health care tech company Everist Health have unveiled a new screening system to determine the risk of complications for COVID-19.

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