WARREN — An Akron-based health care tech company with ties to downtown Warren has figured out a way to digitally screen people for the novel coronavirus.

SecurePassDX from GeneratorWorks, a BRITE Energy Innovators portfolio company, is a medical-grade online screening tool that surveys patients to determine the risk of having COVID-19 and the risk of contracting the virus based on the person’s medical history.

It grew from work GeneratorWorks was doing with University Hospital’s physician Brian D’Anza to develop software to digitally screen patients for other illnesses, like the common cold to the flu to urinary tract infections.

“We were working on integrating the algorithms in the Queue system when COVID-19 (struck) and said we need to get this out broader than just our hospital customers,” said Blake Squires, CEO of GeneratorWorks.

Queue is a digital check-in and registration system the company developed. D’Anza and his company, SmartDocMD, built the clinical algorithms that GeneratorWorks is licensing for SecurePassDX.

SecurePassDX is accessible from any device and contains a survey that takes less than three minutes to complete. It plugs in patient demographics, geolocation, risk factors, illness symptoms, severity and comorbid conditions and provides the user with a risk stratification by color — red, yellow or green.

In addition, it also creates a decision support plan — the plan a doctor typical uses to treat patients.

“Once you are done taking SecurePassDX, not only do you get risk stratified … you also get this decision support plan that you can take to your medical provider,” Squires said.

Said D’Anza, the software works “to make sure the right patients are being seen at the right time.

“It ensures health systems can triage patients before they spend hours sitting in the ER, clinic, or other hospital site, which reduces transmission of this highly contagious disease,” he said.

GeneratorWorks has been affiliated with BRITE, Ohio’s only energy and clean tech business incubator, for about a year.

“When there is an opportunity to save lives and help get people back to work, you drop what you are doing and help. SecurePassDX are some of the helpers that are going to help get us back to work and keep people safe, and I couldn’t be prouder to support them,” Rick Stockburger, BRITE president and CEO, said.

rselak@tribtoday.com