Businesses all over the globe are facing the ever-increasing challenge of keeping their employees safe and complying with safety guidelines to slow the spread of COVID-19. While many businesses have adopted work-from-home procedures and others have furloughed their employees or shut down completely, essential businesses are still operational and finding it more critical than ever to manage the situation.
Healthcare, emergency services and construction are among the industry categories considered essential to continue operations. At Triax, we knew our technology could be redesigned to help these industries, so we got to work developing a new solution.
Proximity Trace, our newest solution, leverages our flagship Spot-r solution designed for workforce visibility and addresses two main areas of concern – Social Distancing and Contact Tracing – to help improve safety on worksites. It utilizes a small device, called a TraceTag, which is mounted to a hardhat and communicates with other devices within range.
Social Distancing & Contact Tracing
The CDC, ECDC, and NY DOH all cite a minimum of 6 feet of social distancing as a key effort in flattening the curve and minimizing the spread of COVID-19. The ECDC further classifies by time of exposure with a key threshold of > 15 minutes in a day.
Proximity Trace was designed to provide active feedback in the form of an audible and visual alarm when workers come within close distance to each other. There is also an option where the alarm beeps increase in frequency if they neglect to correct their distance or get closer to each other. This feedback serves as a reminder to workers to properly distance on the worksite.
In addition to actively alerting workers who are in close proximity, the tags collect worker interaction data passively. Each TraceTag maintains a log of interactions with other tags as well as the duration of those interactions. That information is stored on the device until the worker passes by a gateway, usually at the entrance of the worksite, where it will transmit that log to our cloud dashboard.
Contact tracing is the process of identifying who an individual, with a confirmed case of COVID-19, came in contact with over a period of time. Proximity Trace can assist with contact tracing efforts to identify candidates who have been in contact with confirmed infected individuals to help target and prioritize, but not replace traditional mechanisms of confirmation.
How it all works
Unlike our Spot-r solution, Proximity Trace does not collect zone-based worker location on a worksite. Instead, Gateways are placed at site entrances and exits as well as high traffic areas. A worker is assigned a TraceTag and the solution is ready to deploy. Proximity Trace is easily scalable with your changing workforce and can be set up by any qualified supervisor on site in just a few hours.
Contact us to learn more about this new solution and learn more about how we can assist you with your COVID-19 protocols.