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Smarth Health Check

The early months of 2020 ushered in a virus that not only took over headlines, but took over the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected millions of people around the globe, bucking social norms, workplace rules, and basic everyday life. Healthcare workers find themselves at risk, working round-the-clock to find a cure, comforting those afflicted, and protecting the public from an invisible foe. The pandemic brought unprecedented challenges and decisions that require nimble and unique solutions.

COVID-19 has also brought a heightened sense of accountability. People are not only accountable for our own health, but for the health and welfare of those that we encounter. We are responsible for maintaining safe facilities, responsible for the well-being of staff, visitors, and patrons alike. This pandemic has taught us to be flexible and adjustable, to establish new ways of doing business in a short amount of time.

This accountability is most evident in senior living facilities. Managing a senior living facility is a challenge in the best of times, but add a global pandemic and the challenges multiply many times over. Although COVID-19 has brought about specific requirements and compliance needs for management of senior living facilities, it has created an overarching need to be accountable for all persons interacting with such a facility. This accountability manifests itself into a need for a comprehensive visitor management solution that provides immediate value for managing during the pandemic but also one that provides value beyond COVID.

Smart Health Check

Owners, operators, and managers of senior living facilities must assess how to effectively create a safe environment for residents, staff, and visitors. From daily health self-attestations, to on-site temperature checks, to technology such as contact tracing and thermal cameras, organizations are searching for the best methods to ensure staff and visitors are well enough to enter the facility. In addition, this same technology can check residents for potential symptoms without incurring prohibitive costs, taking up valuable time, or violating personal privacy protections.

A visitor management system is the ideal technological solution, it satisfies the compelling need to know who is in the facility and to know more about them, from a safety and security perspective and from a health risk perspective. Smart Health Check is such a solution for screening staff, visitors, and residents for potential fever and compliance with CDC COVID questions.

The Smart Health Check visitor management solution is ideal for senior living facilities, but it is scalable so it can be used in most corporate, healthcare, or educational facilities. Smart Health Check is an unattended solution, once installed and configured, the solution runs by itself freeing critical lobby personnel and reducing the risk of COVID spread via close contact. The system consists of these components:

• M16 Thermographic Radiometric Camera

A microbolometer radiometric camera with a dual lens, one thermal and one optical. The camera detects a human from as much as15 feet away, targets the head, and records the external body temperature in less than one second. The thermal camera includes two-way audio so it can broadcast alerts. The optical lens is used to identify the individual through a face recognition engine on the server.

• R Kiosk

The IR scanner uses infrared sensor technology to target the inner canthus of the eye and to record external body temperature form one foot in about one second. The kiosk includes a face recognition camera, so temperature data is correlated and stored for the corresponding person.

• Self-Attestation Kiosk

This kiosk is an Android (or iPhone) tablet that displays the COVID-19 Health Risk Screening form recommended by the CDC as well as other forms required by the institution.

• Smart Health Check Server

A Linux server on premise complete with enrollment data, sensor configuration, and customized user rights. The system can be accessed via any browser connecting to the server.

Putting the Solution to Work

Smart Health Check is an all-in-one, integrated system that helps a senior living facility satisfy enhanced guidelines and regulations for mitigating the spread of COVID-19. The system uses facial recognition cameras and software to identify staff and residents and to maintain a record of their external body temperatures and self-attestation answers. This combination of technologies helps to identify those individuals that show symptoms of the virus and sends an alert to the staff member or supervisor if the system detects an elevated external body temperature or if the staff member indicates the presence of symptoms during the self-attestation phase.

The first step to implement Smart Health Check is to enroll staff and select residents (independent living) into the system by having their picture taken and associating select metadata, like a name, an employee number, or a room number, to each facial image. During the initial roll-out this process can be done in batch, but after implementation enrollees are maintained via an onboarding process within the Human Resources department.

As staff or residents approach the self-attestation kiosk, the camera detects their presence takes a snapshot of their face, and records their external body temperature. The system compares this image to those on file and identifies the person through facial recognition. Once the system recognizes a person, it records their temperature and prompts them to answer the COVID-19 screening question on the self-attestation kiosk. The person chooses between “no to all” or “yes to any” of the questions on the self-attestation kiosk and taps the submit button with a disposable stylus.

Smart Health Check uses a variety of pre-defined mechanisms to provide notifications upon events, such as an elevated external body temperature or a “YES” answer to the COVID-19 self-attestation questions. The system can:

• Send an email to selected individuals
• Send a text message to selected individuals
• Provide an audible notification from a computer or a separate speaker
• Flash a visual notification, such as the screen frame turning red

Issue an audible notification from the thermal camera, including pre-recorded voice messages. The system stores all temperatures and self-attestation answers electronically for automatic data retention, no need to collect and file paper forms. From these electronic files, administrators can generate compliance reports on demand to check compliance with state, county, or local health guidelines and mandates.

Beyond COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the rules – where we can work, where we can go – and has made accountability for the health of each other a concern for individuals as well as businesses, especially for those engaged in the housing and care of the country’s senior population. Systems like Smart Health Check help to ensure the safety of all involved, from staff to residents, and mitigate the spread of the virus. Hope is on the horizon, though dedicated scientists synthesized an effective vaccine in record time, and as more and more people are inoculated, we can dare to look for the return of normal.

While Smart Health Check is the ideal solution for the current pandemic, the system is future-proof for a post-pandemic world. Smart Health Check is not just a virus-mitigation system, it is a complete visitor management system that is scalable and configurable to meet the safety and the security needs of a senior living facility. In addition to recording temperatures and maintaining a record of COVID-19 self-attestations, the system is also ready to provide traditional visitor management tasks:

• Enroll contractors, consultants, and family members to track entry and maintain a list of who is in the facility
• Detect unknown entrants using facial recognition and offer them the opportunity enroll as a visitor after a positive identification
• Maintain a VIP list of residents and their family members to alert staff to offer extra attention
• Maintain a block list to identify people not permitted inside the facility (for example, ex-employees or people served with restraining orders) and issue an alarm if the system recognizes such a person
• Add surveillance cameras to key locations enhancing facility security
• Integrate access control and face-as-a-credential technology for contactless entry/exit management
• Scan driver’s license for positive identification
• Print visitor badges

Conclusion

Accountability, a word that has taken on new meaning in 2020. While we have always been accountable to ourselves – we are ultimately responsible for our health and well-being – the age of COVID-19 has made each of us accountable for the health and well-being of those around us. This need for accountability is most evident in facilities that serve the senior and elderly population, our most vulnerable people. Owners and staff at senior living facilities know all too well the challenges of safeguarding their residents, but add a global pandemic and accountability is now a requirement for facility management.

Smart Health Check, however, delivers a solution to help maintain the health of a facility, from staff to residents to visitors. This system allows organizations to perform critical health risk assessments unattended – freeing up valuable, costly resources and helping to slow the spread of the virus by limiting personal contact. Smart Health Check provides the accountability needed in our ever-changing world.

While mitigation efforts are costly, but necessary, facilities need to ensure dollars spent translate into an effective solution for today’s unique need and that the solution is useful beyond COVID-19. Compliance requirements are constantly changing and the ability to adapt to those changes is critical, Smart Health Check offers the flexibility to scale from a virus mitigation system to a complete visitor management system that enhances not only safety but security for staff and residents. We will move past this pandemic and relegate its effects to the pages of history books, not to be forgotten but to preserve the lessons learned for future generations.