Appnovation partners with BC health authorities to manage Covid-19
Vancouver-based digital consultancy Appnovation has developed a solution to help prevent cross contamination between healthcare facilities in BC.
The firm was enlisted by the Ministry of Health in British Columbia and the Provincial Health Officer (PHO) to support a single site staffing initiative at long term and assisted living facilities.
Healthcare workers are the most exposed group to Covid-19 as they care for a growing number of cases, and many staff work at multiple healthcare facilities. To cut down on transmission risks, the PHO made executive orders last month to limit staff movement at provincial long-term care facilities and private hospitals, as well as requesting employment data to allocate staff to work at a single site.
Appnovation was engaged to support the province’s collection, analysis, and reporting of personnel data, geared toward a goal of single site staffing. The digital consultancy determined what data needed to collected, how to do it securely, and also developed a common data standard across the province.
The firm used the Google Cloud platform to create a secure data pipeline hosted in Canada, collecting staffing data for more than 100,000 healthcare workers in 1,200 facilities. Appnovation also built a website where multi-site workers can enter their preferred employment site.
The collected data is then used to create visualizations and insights for real-time reporting to help the PHO and regional health authorities allocate staff.
"The B.C. government was looking for a digital solution to solve a very real and very urgent healthcare problem," said Scott Wassmer, general manager of Americas at Appnovation. "Through Appnovation's consultation, data analytics and real-time insights, we've already been able to identify hot spots within the provincial healthcare facilities where there's a lot of staff working at multiple sites. With that information in hand, the team is able to support the Health Authorities on decisions about resourcing to prevent any unintentional spread of COVID-19, protecting both staff and patients."
Appnovation was founded in 2007 and provides services in digital strategy, user experience, technical development, deployment, training, and support. The company works with startups, Fortune 500s, government, and non-profits, and has over 300 employees across 15 offices in North America, Europe, and Hong Kong.
