Backed by Active Capital, ReturnSafe’s BioSecurity Platform has been implemented by more than thirty organizations as part of their return to office protocols
ReturnSafe, a mission-driven BioSecurity company focused on workplace health safety, announced today that since the beginning of May, more than 30 organizations have adopted the ReturnSafe BioSecurity Platform to help keep their work environments safe for their communities.
“In February, I started to see the human and economic destruction unfold in Asian countries due to the Coronavirus and knew that soon, the virus would be impacting us here in the United States,” said Tarun Nimmagadda, Founder and CEO of ReturnSafe. “Based on history and the infectious diseases that have come before, I recognized that waiting for a vaccine could take a very long time and it would not be the silver bullet that everyone hoped for. I knew that the only way to slow the spread of the Coronavirus and to help businesses stay open was to offer a solution that would screen, test and trace COVID-19 in the workplace.”
The ReturnSafe BioSecurity Platform offers organizations an end to end solution that slows the spread of infectious diseases by implementing critical daily screening with a symptoms diary and recommendations governed by HR policies; testing data management for quick notification of a positive test; and Bluetooth contact-tracing via smartphone and hardware wearables at the workplace including a built-in social distancing alarm.
“We have been pleased with ReturnSafe as a solution to manage the safety of employees at corporate, regional and property locations in multiple states,” said Mark H. Dambly, President of Pennrose. “Our property management and maintenance teams are essential employees and have been reporting to work throughout the shutdowns, and with the pandemic, we needed to find a scalable solution that would allow us to screen our 400+ person workforce. The ReturnSafe BioSecurity Platform enables us to conduct daily screening and contact tracing, which helps our Human Resources team manage risks associated with keeping our employees safe at work.”
ReturnSafe supports businesses in various industries including health and senior care organizations, educational institutions, event venues, non-profits, hospitality, manufacturing, law, real estate, financial services and more, throughout the United States including Hawaii, and Canada and the United Kingdom.
Founded by Tarun Nimmagadda, Jikku Venkat (Chief Technology and Head of Product), Dr. Reef Gillum (Chief Medical Officer) and Jason Story (Vice President of Business Development and Sales), ReturnSafe draws from the deep experience of the founders in public health policy, healthcare IT systems, consumer technology and enterprise software development.
“The majority of businesses, from schools and non-profit organizations to nursing homes and event venues, are rapidly searching for ways to get back to work safely,” said Pat Matthews, Founder and CEO of Active Capital. “We believe ReturnSafe is uniquely positioned to holistically address this challenge. Their founding team has the experience and mission-driven focus to truly make a difference and we are thrilled to support their journey.”
At ReturnSafe, we work with organizations across Business, Education, Manufacturing, Sports & Entertainment, Hospitality and beyond. This month, we collected a few stories to share how our customers are using ReturnSafe’s BioSecurity platform to return to work.
Video: How this School Returned to Campus
Hear from Strake Jesuit College Preparatory on why they chose our solution to keep students, faculty and staff safe while returning to campus. Watch our video
Case Study: Automating Daily Health Checks in Nursing Homes
Nursing homes were the hardest hit during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Find out why Redstone Presbyterian SeniorCare chose ReturnSafe to protect their community. Download the case study
Webinar Replay: Why You Need a Campus-Wide BioSecurity Plan
Hear from Stephen Alderman, Vice President & General Counsel for South Texas College of Law Houston on how his team is using our BioSecurity platform to keep their doors open. Watch the webinar replay
Are you looking for screening and contact tracing tools for your organization? Book a demo with someone on our team to try our tools! Learn how it works.
We are excited to announce our first virtual event! On September 23rd, we will be hosting a free webinar to discuss how South Texas College of Law Houston implemented ReturnSafe to keep their school open and safe. Register below!
UPCOMING: Case Study Webinar
Join us on September 23rd to learn how South Texas College of Law Houston is utilizing ReturnSafe to provide daily health screening and digital contact tracing to ensure student, faculty, and staff safety amidst COVID-19. Register here
3 Return to Work Plans From Industry Leaders
Businesses are implementing new health and safety measures to address the pandemic. These organizations crafted reopening plans specific to the needs of their industry. Read more
How Will You Meet The CDC Guidelines For Returning To Work?
How is your solution meeting the CDC’s key reopening criteria? Our solution can help you check their boxes! Read more
Why Your Business Needs a Contact Tracing Application
What steps is your organization taking to prevent an outbreak? Let us help you create a plan to stop COVID-19 transmission in its tracks. Read more
Are you looking for screening and contact tracing tools for your organization? Book a demo with someone on our team to try our tools! Learn how it works.
The following post summarizes key findings from the article ‘Impact of delays on effectiveness of contact tracing strategies for COVID-19: a modeling study’ published by The Lancet Public Health. The piece is written by Dr. Mirjam E Kretzschmar, Dr. Ganna Rozhnova, Dr. Martin C J Bootsma, Dr. Michiel van Boven, Dr. Janneke H H M van de Wijgert, and Dr. Marc J M Bonten. Read on to explore the importance of a contact tracing solution in the effectiveness of containing the spread of COVID-19.
The article explored the impact of delays in tracing and testing to effective contact tracing. Additionally, it examined and compared the effectiveness of manual contact tracing and mobile app-based contact tracing.
You do not want a delay in COVID-19 testing
It is important to minimize the time between symptom onset and receiving a positive test result in order to prevent further infections. The article asserts that minimizing testing delay is crucial to improving contact tracing effectiveness, assuming immediate isolation following a test result. Our daily screening application will prompt employees to stay at home and see a doctor immediately after they report COVID-19 symptoms. Additionally, users can directly report positive test results within the application to notify administrators.
You do not want a delay in contact tracing
Decreasing the amount of time it takes to trace contacts is incredibly important to reducing overall COVID-19 transmission. The article found that shortening this time interval boosted the efficacy of contact tracing. In the study, they assumed the person immediately sought testing and then isolated, if positive. Our contact tracing application allows users to log who they’ve been in contact with. Additionally, through our BioSecurity Portal, administrators can see who a positive case has been in contact with, automatically via Bluetooth tracking and can then notify those who were potentially exposed.
App-Based Contact Tracing vs Manual Contact Tracing
Overall, they found mobile app-based contact tracing to be more effective than conventional contact tracing because of the application’s quick response capabilities. One interesting case they did not study in this piece was a hybrid approach with conventional and app-based contact tracing systems. ReturnSafe’s solution provides you with an app-based solution. However, through our Partnership with TaskUs, you also have access to manual tracing options. With our solution, your administrators have all the tools they need to effectively control and contain the COVID-19 outbreak and keep employees safe.
What factors may negatively impact contact tracing?
The article also identified hindrances to effective contact tracing. Amongst these were a significant number of undiagnosed or asymptomatic cases and untraceable contacts.
How can you reduce the impact of these factors?
App-based screening and contact tracing solutions can increase the number of traceable contacts and diagnosed cases. However, to do this, there must be substantial participation, application acceptance, and sustained usage. What does that mean? Your employees should feel the application is built for their safety to encourage user participation. Our solution is crafted by experts in UX design and app development to optimize the users experience. How do you know if your application is widely accepted? Through our BioSecurity Portal administrators can directly monitor screening compliance.
Our goal is to empower the employees and the organization to stay safe. So we created features that allow users and administrators to maximize the effectiveness of contact tracing. Every measure your organization takes to prevent infection will lower the overall number of cases and contain the outbreak.
So, let’s start now! Book a demo to learn more about how our solution can protect your organization to combat COVID-19.
As we all continue to navigate reopening, the importance of maintaining a healthy and safe space for our coworkers, partners and customers is paramount. We rounded up some of our recent articles to help you put a best in class return to work procedure in place.
Why You Need a BioSecurity Program
Opening safely and staying open is everyone’s goal right now. In order to do this in an effective way, businesses need a BioSecurity program. Learn why
How the Betsy Hotel is Addressing COVID-19
Daily employee screening and contact tracing technology is key to their reopening. Find out why they chose ReturnSafe. Read more
COVID-19 Business Insurance Implications
As businesses start returning to work, the question lingers, what will happen to business insurance? COVID-19 is making waves. Find out how
Are you looking for screening and contact tracing tools for your organization? Book a demo with someone on our team to try our tools! Learn how it works.
As businesses start returning to work, the question lingers, what will happen to business insurance? Business Interruption Insurance has made headlines throughout the shutdown for excluding pandemics from coverage. The reason for this is twofold, Business Interruption Insurance is typically tied to property and casualty, of which the losses from the government shutdowns did not impact. And many policies specifically have a pandemic exclusion. Therefore, the need for a new type of coverage now exists and it will most likely be tied to biosecurity processes that businesses will be required to put into place. Read on to explore the current state of business insurance, how biosecurity can help, and why business will need to implement a suite of new proactive measures to protect their organizations from future disease outbreaks.
Current State of Business Insurance During COVID-19 & the PRIA Bill
Previously, pandemic-related insurance was practically non-existent, except for ‘PathogenRX 2018’, which was not in high demand. And because Business Interruption Insurance is both connected to property and casualty and the major insurers put pandemic exclusions into place thanks to Ebola and Swine Flu, businesses were left out to dry when COVID-19 hit—organizations were not covered for the losses they would incur due to the effects of the both the disease and the consequent government shutdowns.
However, no one is writing policies for the current pandemic, just as it’s nearly impossible to get flood insurance during a hurricane. Also, insurance companies will only take on so much of one type of risk, and the demand is so high for pandemic-related insurance it will likely become ‘sold out’ from the major insurers when it does become available. This is the reasoning behind the PRIA Bill introduced recently in Congress
The PRIA Bill would create a program in which participating insurers would offer pandemic-related business interruption and event cancellation coverage, and they would be reimbursed by a federal backstop for some of their losses. Having a government backed solution will allow more insurers to come into the market to meet the demand.
Need for Biosecurity
In the long run, what this means for businesses is that they need to implement a suite of new proactive measures to protect their organizations from disease outbreaks as well as put policies in place to maintain business continuity more seamlessly than they had when COVID-19 hit.
Many businesses found themselves in a position where they could not track exposure to to the virus, so if someone tested positive, they had to shut down their entire facility. However, with a biosecurity plan in place, management can see where the infected person was in the facility and whom else they may have exposed. For example, if an infected person worked in the sales department on the 2nd floor, they can just isolate the 2nd floor only and in some cases only the sales department. Being able to see who is exposed to an infected person allows businesses to isolate individual areas as needed, which is the first step in mitigating the losses caused by a virus.
How Biosecurity Will Improve Business Insurance
Biosecurity processes that allow organizations to strategically screen, monitor and trace disease infections throughout their facilities are starting to become mission critical to business operation. Besides making the workplace safer for everyone, they will also make insurance more affordable and less risky.
Just like when you install a fire alarm, insurers are likely to give you a discount because you have taken a proactive step to minimize the risk of losses from an insurable event. Biosecurity is essentially a combination of an alarm system (screening/monitoring) and a sprinkler system (contract tracing). The early detection and fast mitigation that is made possible with BioSecurity is along the same lines as defending against other conventional threats like fire, floods, and earthquakes. Visit our How it Works page to see exactly how our tools can help you protect your business.
Legal Necessity for Biosecurity
The Job Safety Act of 1970 gave rise to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which requires employers to protect their employees from known and common threats. A biosecurity solution like ReturnSafe will likely become mandated as public health hazards that are linked to employee safety. COVID-19 has brought those threats to the forefront. We see this as an opportunity to collaborate with insurance companies to write in disease mitigation and protections to their new health policies.
This is what will drive the price of pandemic-related insurance down and allow major insurers to meet the demand for businesses impacted by not only COVID-19, but also those concerned with the lingering effects of the disease as well as future bio-threats.
The personal threat that COVID-19 puts upon employees, is already covered by OSHA policies because it is what is known as a “lethal moment.” As the situation develops, it is unlikely that companies can be held accountable for employees contracting the virus at work, but if they haven’t done enough to prevent an outbreak at their facility, it is likely they will be held accountable for the oversights. The questions management teams need to be asking themselves right now are:
What processes can we put in place to mitigate and protect against airborne illnesses spreading?
How do we educate our workforce on the best practices to protect themselves and their co-workers?
How do we approach pandemic insurance? And how to put ourselves in a position to receive the best rate from an insurer?
No matter what industry you are in, our screening, monitoring, and tracing tools give our clients the ability to provide a protective mechanism for their employees, customers, and partners. For more information on how we can help your team put a biosecurity process in place and to prepare for the new world of business insurance that we are all entering, request a demo today. Learn how it works.
Recent Comments