By now, if you think we’re not going to be living with COVID-19 for some time, you’re not being realistic. The way we work, socialize, and play is all going to be different – perhaps forever. That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do these things, and companies all over the place have re-opened their doors. But they have had to rely on tech companies for support in order to do it safely.
That’s what the Eurofins SAFER@WORK program is all about – helping businesses in all sectors create and manage safe work environments that are in compliance with local regulations.
SAFER@WORK is a series of solutions developed to follow guidelines published by CDC, WHO, OSHA, and other organizations. The program includes education, consulting, self-assessment tools, and on-site testing and auditing solutions, including:
- Designing and auditing of COVID-19 related sampling and testing protocols as well as action plans;
- Detecting the potential presence of the virus within teams on a site or in a given community through wastewater testing;
- Testing for the virus on all types of environmental surfaces in the workplace to detect potential risks early and monitor the effectiveness of cleaning protocols;
- Testing of employees, when needed and as decided by a qualified physician, within the guidelines of healthcare authorities in each country (with a range of modalities including PCR testing and/or serology testing for various antibodies);
- An array of other solutions ranging from assurance and consultative services, relevant product testing, and self-assessment or e-learning tools.
Industrial IoT company Guardhat has now joined the SAFER@WORK program to promote workplace safety through a combination of the Eurofins program and its own wearable technology. The solution it has developed for industrial workplace safety, including its Kyra analytics platform, is now being adapted to include COVID-19 safety monitoring and management and combined with the SAFER@WORK program to benefit both large and small organizations.
Guardhat’s location-based COVID-19 solution features:
- Social distancing – A smart hard hat, tag, or third-party wearable or mobile device generates audible, visual or haptic alerts when workers move within 6 feet of each other.
- Real-time data visualization – Alert data is sent to Kyra platform, its web-based platform that enables immediate response. It also stores each contact and its duration for future analysis and reporting for contact tracing purposes.
- Analytics & reporting – Contact tracing enables quick identification of others who have been in close proximity to workers who may have been exposed to or have tested positive for COVID-19.
The real-time, geo- and time-stamped data in the Kyra platform provides highly valuable information that can be used to monitor workplace safety, but to understand problem areas in work environments – such as specific bottlenecks where distancing is a recurring problem.
Combining the two solutions, including Guardhat’s location-based monitoring and Eurofins’ testing solutions, businesses will be able to more effectively create modified workplace arrangements to comply with distancing and other mandates. That includes creating heat maps of high risk areas based on testing, distancing, and contact tracing.
There’s no simple answer to COVID-19, but tech can help make returning to work a little less cumbersome and a lot less risky.
