As things are beginning to open again, I’m hearing of some more solutions for protecting employees from Covid infection. Recently I interviewed the Early on during the pandemic, I interviewed several executives who had solutions for preventing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as people either continued to work in manufacturing or would be called back at any time.
Founder/CEO of another such company–Soumi Eachempati, MD, FACS, FCCM, Co-Founder and CEO of Chelsea Health Solutions and Cleared4 and a former Professor of Surgery and Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical School.
Eachempati is sort of a “checklist guru” having formerly developed an app to be used in triage in emergency rooms when patients (or others) could answer a few quick questions on a tablet or phone to assist ER personnel expedite treatment.
Similarly, he maintains the manufacturing industry can protect their workers by implementing the following safety checklist:
· Identify, Test, Trace: The backbone of a solid identification strategy is a strong symptom monitor that identifies individuals who need to be tested and quarantined.
· Educate and Communicate: Educating workers about Covid-19 risks is as important as education on safety protocols and equipment use.
· Enforce Symptom Monitor Adoption: Less than absolute adoption is especially frightening when one considers that the individuals who do not participate may be the one most likely to harbor Covid-19 or its symptoms.
Back to the ER app, he had evolved the app into a flu checker. Then when Covid struck, and the app could be used to differentiate Covid from flu. Started Cleared4 to promote and sell the app.
Cleared4, a scalable, customizable HIPAA-compliant platform, helps organizations seamlessly monitor employee Covid-19 symptoms by quarantining those at risk and enabling low risk employees to return to school and work in keeping with the constantly changing state mandates. Cleared4 is a patent-pending health management platform that uniquely uses text messaging, health centric technologies, and on-site kiosks to obtain valuable health clearance for employees.
It is an SaaS application where companies (and others) can buy instances and are given private URL. Enter employees or other concerned people who need to be screened into the app via csv file. It’s a self-screener for now. Employee answers the questions on the app (also can input vital data like vaccines) and gets OK (or not) from the app. Obtains a personal QR code or the information is logged to the employee data in customer’s system. This allows entry into the building. Employees are tagged into geophysical groups. If someone reports Covid infection, app can be used to track who may have come into contact and notify them to monitor and test.
The platform is currently being used by at least one NBA and one NHL team, with more in negotiations.
Companies are also buying. A chemical company in Illinois, for example.
Could be available B2C for usual customers or even C2C say someone is giving a Bar Mitzva or arranging neighborhood playdates.
Knowing the number of times I’ve sat through safety videos at chemical plants, refineries, and the like and been logged in and given a card, I could imagine this app as part of the entire safety process. Great for contractors or vendors.
Drawback
The main drawback I saw in the app was that it depended upon the person to enter their own information. I asked a friend who works at a chemical plant about this. He told me they had done a turnaround late last year with about 900 contractors on site. They used an active monitoring application called Triax with few instances of infection during the work.
I guess I believe that some of each may not be a bad strategy. (By the way, the Triax people never contacted me. I’m just reporting a customer experience.)
