News & Resources

Australian Technology Produces COVID Solution

Written by Harry Morton | Jun 29, 2020 3:50:36 AM

A year ago, the COVID 19 pandemic and its subsequent ripple effect on the global economy would have been unthinkable. Fast forward to February 2020, the world was beginning to acknowledge the severity of the threat presented by the novel coronavirus.

Entire industries were forced to rapidly adapt their operational infrastructure and service offering. As a value-driven technology company, MyPass® chose to act on the opportunity to be agile by adapting the platform to cater to the needs of our clients, users and key Australian sectors. Our advanced Australian technology was built to store, verify, manage and share information, which put us in a unique position to support businesses looking to have visibility of their employee health information. Today, 76 businesses, including industry leaders like Santos, have been able to utilise our free solution to track the health status of key workers within a central, cloud-based system.

Collaboration was Key

We consulted with our clients, plus government and industry bodies and quickly identified an opportunity to adapt our software. Our team developed multiple COVID-19 specific features to simplify the process of tracking user health data to instil confidence in employers that steps had been taken to protect staff. By helping to verify each worker’s ability to enter the workplace, MyPass® helped minimise the risk of someone unknowingly spreading the virus. 

We garnered the support of government and industry bodies whilst forming partnerships with other providers such as Clui to develop the features. MyPass® also received a grant from the National Energy Resources Association (NERA) which allocated funding for Australian technology firms responding to the crisis with innovative solutions.

MyPass®’s COVID-19 Solution

COVID-19 Self Declaration Form

The MyPass® Self Declaration Forms allow workers to declare their health status and any potential risk of exposure to the virus. With a seven-day expiry date, employees complete weekly declarations and are awarded either a “High Risk” or “Low Risk” certificate based on their responses. This is then displayed on their MyPass® profile and the statistics are visible via the employer's Compliance Dashboard. In the case of a “High-Risk” declaration, Employer Admin users are notified by MyPass® so they can respond accordingly. Since its release, over 3520 unique users have completed digital Self Declaration forms through MyPass® and over 6103 total completed declarations have been stored in our platform.

Immunisation & Vaccination Evidence Storage

When the government mandated Influenza Vaccinations for anyone entering an Aged Care facility, we introduced the ability to store evidence of immunisation within MyPass®. Once uploaded, our team then verifies those documents to give providers peace of mind that their facilities are protected and compliant with regulations. Since adding the feature, over 160 verified Influenza Immunisation documents have been uploaded to MyPass® worker profiles. Amongst these, our Verifications team detected a number of unsatisfactory documents due to mismatched information or poor document quality. In efforts to develop COVID-19 vaccination progress, we will partner with Medical assessment centres to make it possible for users to also store this evidence within their profiles.

Digital COVID-19 Return to Work Training

We released a ‘COVID-19 Return to Work’ training course, helping workers to build awareness of safe hygiene practices upon returning to the workplace. The training was based on the Australian Department of Health’s guidelines for preventing the spread of the virus. This came after observing that the Government-issued advice could be enhanced in order to cover the ‘return to work’ scenario that many of us are now in. We developed our guide based on these criteria, to provide a comprehensive resource for workers to understand best practices when returning to the workplace. The training course has since been completed by users from over 30 different organisations. 

The Benefits for Business

By offering access to our technology platform, we were delighted to be able to ease the administrative burden for businesses that were rapidly adapting their processes to support the safety of staff and customers. This was achieved by presenting worker-owned and controlled health data as a real-time, single ‘system of record’. Business owners can now maintain business continuity by tracking the impact of the virus on their employees, as well as their compliance with new government regulations. At the same time, workers are also empowered to proactively declare their health situation by independently updating their status so potential employers can see that their workers are “Low Risk” or “High Risk” of carrying the virus. This information is stored digitally and easily accessed when individuals are required to share proof of their ability to work. 

Opening the Door to Australian Technology for New Sectors

In addition to offering our solution to our primary market, the Energy & Resources sector, we reached out to our connections in one of the most high-risk industries during this time, the Health & Aged Care sector. Through collaboration with the Aged & Community Services Australia (ACSA) & Leading Aged Services Australia, we were able to offer our solution to Aged Care providers free of charge. You can read more about the impact of this offering on the sector in our case study with Glenview Community Services here

After continuously adapting our COVID-19 solution over the past three months, our team will endeavour to develop and evolve these features to continue to benefit the industry as the global situation unfolds. Beyond the current circumstances, we also see a place for this kind of Australian technology to allow current and future users to continue to track the health status of their workforce to enhance the safety of staff and compliance with regulations. The benefit of a cloud-based system like MyPass® is that it protects the security of Personally Identifiable Information that is controlled and uploaded by the workers directly. Being ISO 27001 accredited is a key part of this protection of people’s data. MyPass® also has the capacity to act as a central repository for the future capture of safety-critical information such as COVID-19 test results.  

For more information or to watch a demo on MyPass®’s free digital workforce COVID-19 solution for industry, visit our website here. To enquire about our free Aged Care solution, you can discover more or watch a demo on our website here. Alternatively, you can contact MyPass on through enquiries@mypassglobal.com