Each week, Freethink’s Progress Report explores what the solutions of today will mean for your tomorrow.
In this episode, we see how healthcare workers at a San Francisco hospital are staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite some states reopening, the coronavirus is still alive and kicking. As the world waits for a vaccine, many new and innovative solutions for how to track the infected are in the works.
At the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, a coronavirus screening tool is helping 25,000 employees get to work faster and safer. In March, healthcare workers were forced to wait in long lines to be screened for COVID-19 before entering the building.
It’s impossible to test everyone, everyday, but an app developed by Conversa Health helped the UCSF Medical Center ensure that they were keeping patients and workers safe. The coronavirus screening app allows their employees to easily assess their exposure risk and symptoms daily, so they can either be cleared to come into work or asked to stay home.
Once cleared, an employee receives a digital “badge” that they’re required to show upon entering the building. This decreased the amount of time it took employees to wait in line from 25 minutes to 1-2 minutes at peak hours of the day.
Similar technology could be developed to ensure that the coronavirus doesn’t spread in other public places, such as your local comic book shop. Would you share your health data to enter a retail store?
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