World Day for Health and Safety at Work probably isn’t on your calendar. But given the tragedy, disruption and dysfunction the world has endured since we first heard the term “COVID-19” back in 2020, perhaps it should be.

Yes, it’s one of those “theme days” – the kind of day that Hallmark just loves, and the world’s parliaments, city councils, pressure groups and mayors love to bloviate about. You know, National Motorcycle Ride Day (second Saturday in October in the US), the International Day of Democracy (Sept. 7 at the United Nations), or the Day of European Unity (which, typically, is celebrated either May 5 or May 9, depending on which part of united Europe you’re in).

The US Congress has declared thousands of these “official days,” from National Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Day (Sept. 9) to the National Day of the American Cowboy (fourth Saturday in July).

Many of these “celebrations” slide by unnoticed, or barely noticed, and maybe that’s as it should be. Yet April 28 carries a designation worth dwelling upon in these difficult, late pandemic times. Declared two decades ago by the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO), World Day for Health and Safety at Work is meant as a reminder that when we get into routines that prioritize things like efficiency and productivity, safety and well-being can often be left by the wayside.

Safeguarding a global workforce

It seems another century almost, and at Microshare, this day in April holds special relevance. Two years ago – April 28, 2020 – we unveiled Universal Contact Tracing (UCT), the first product designed specifically to safeguard workers against large outbreaks of COVID-19 with privacy and consent in global workplaces.

As lockdowns began sending office workers and students home in March 2020 across much of the world, Microshare understood that for much of the world – manufacturers, miners, food processors and more – “remote work” was not an option. The wristbands, powered by Bluetooth with a LoRaWAN data backhaul, create a historical database of contact events. These remain anonymous until someone reports symptoms of the virus, at which time a reverse database query identifies who should be tested or quarantined.

As the pandemic took hold, governments and technologists – including Google and Apple – set out to leverage smart phones as a means of contact tracing. But we quickly saw the flaws in this. As I  told the Financial Times, privacy issues were going to make uptake of a smart phone training app difficult to enforce and arguably illegal in some jurisdictions because of laws prohibiting the harvesting of data. “It’s really a stunning blind spot of the [Apple-Google] approach that there’s somehow been universal adoption of smart phones. It’s just not true. In fact, the most vulnerable populations in the world are exactly the ones that don’t have them.”

Global companies agreed. The beauty of a wearable is not just that it doesn’t compromise your smart phone or track your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) when you’re off your employer’s premises. It’s also not susceptible to battery failure and it is incredibly cheap, meaning it could be deployed quickly in environments where smart phones are either prohibited or prohibitively expensive.

GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceuticals giant, began deploying Universal Contact Tracing wearables in a factory in Malaysia in May 2020.

“We took a ‘privacy by design’ approach, showing employees the dashboards and being very open to questions of privacy,” said Budaja Lim, GSK’s Southeast Asia Regional CIO. “The key was transparency and to stress that the contact tracing wearables were meant to protect not only them, but also their families.”

GSK ultimately deployed tens of thousands of the badges in factories in 21 countries, and other well-known names followed. Rent-A-Center, the Texas-based furniture rental company, found that UCT helped prevent single cases from spreading. “Microshare’s Universal Contact Tracing is easy to use and extremely valuable in identifying people when the exposed person doesn’t remember the contact event,” said Lynn Jenkins, the company’s HR director.

Beyond the pandemic

In almost every deployment, Microshare clients found that the data generated by the UCT wearables had other benefits. GlaxoSmithKline’s Lim says, “GSK is now viewing this as not only a reactive but a proactive risk management tool.”

In the United Kingdom, multiple new applications for such data are being tested at care homes, where the wearables can indicate important information on quality of care, and even provide alerts if a patient suffering from dementia wanders off the property – a not infrequent issue in the industry.

“Wearable digital devices reduce COVID-19 infections and untimely deaths and provides the possibility of homes opening up to family, community and healthcare professionals,” says Carl Thompson, Professor of Applied Health Research at University of Leeds.

Thompson has since partnered with Microshare on a UK-funded project to develop a wearable based on Microshare’s contact tracing solution to be deployed in elder care homes, which sadly proved to be among the most severely hit of all indoor environments during the pandemic.

Two years later, sadly, the pandemic still stalks the planet. It is easy to fall into old patterns and to forget that before 2020, the world took for granted the safety of indoor spaces and the implications that issues like air quality or density might have on occupants.

April 28, World Day for Health and Safety in the Workplace, seems an apt moment to recall the tragic lessons of COVID-19 and to take the steps those lessons suggest. Microshare’s contact tracing wearables continue to protect workers in far-flung places and remain in demand, particularly in regions not fortunate enough to have widespread access to vaccines. But Microshare, too, learned. Our EverSmart suite of products is designed to address the new demands of the “new normal,” from data-driven cleaning (EverSmart Clean) to air quality (EverSmart Air) to space, wellness, energy and sustainability.

Michael Moran | CMO, Director of Risk & Sustainability | MMoran@microshare.io