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SALT LAKE CITY — On Wednesday, Gov. Gary Herbert announced the state will begin using the Healthy Together to help track COVID-19 symptoms and help health officials slow the spread of the virus.
The state contracted with mobile app company Twenty to develop the system. The cost?
“About $1.75 million to date, and that there is another $1 million that is part of the contract to help with the development of further iterations of the application,” said Paul Edwards, Herbert’s former deputy chief of staff and a member of the state’s COVID-19 task force.
It’s just the latest in a line of contracts as the state is turning to the tech industry to help fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The state has also contracted with Domo, Qualtrics and Nomi Health to set up and run Test Utah — an initiative to increase testing in Utah featuring online assessments, testing facilities and tracking the hotspots for the disease.
According to a blog post written by Silicon Slopes, the state has contracted out millions of dollars for the tech companies to run Test Utah.
I do believe that as people design and spend money and take risks if they come up with a better mousetrap than we probably are interested in buying it if we are trying to collect the mice.
–Gov. Gary Herbert
Domo’s contract with the state is $1.5 million for one year and an additional $500,000 for services; Qualtrics’ is $1.245 million for one year with an added $555,000 for services; and Nomi Health’s contract with the state is $600,000 monthly for each testing tent, according to the blog post.
The state said the new contracts will be paid for using emergency procurement funds.
“There's been kind of an uncertain pathway we've taken as this has never happened before,” Herbert said when asked about the contracts on Wednesday. “But I do believe that as people design and spend money and take risks if they come up with a better mousetrap than we probably are interested in buying it if we are trying to collect the mice.”
Herbert said that the state didn’t envision setting up contracts with some of Utah’s tech giants to help fight the virus, but said that working with private companies isn’t unusual.
“We, in fact, contract with a lot of different companies to provide us with additional help and services,” Herbert said.
As part of its contract, Domo provided a COVID-19 Crisis Command Center and three custom apps — a governor’s app, a hospital bed utilization app, and a personal protective equipment inventory management app — to help share information with the state.
Qualtrics will do the online assessment found at TestUtah.com, as part of its contract. It has also built full integrations into the state’s databases to schedule tests and send notifications based on results.
Nomi Health will run the test sites.
"While this started as a 100% volunteer effort, it quickly became clear that it was turning into something bigger and the state approached the companies involved to formalize the partnership by extending commercial terms," Silicon Slopes wrote.
“It is a competitive basis,” Herbert said of awarding contracts. “We have a lot of people apply all the time to say we've got something that you can utilize.”
The initiative has been lauded by state leaders and Utah Department of Health epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn recently said that “increased access to testing is a key to stopping this outbreak and TestUtah.com is a part of that.”
According to Test Utah, much of the staff is working on a volunteer basis and all testing and equipment is being funded by the state of Utah. The cost to the state is approximately $50 per test.
