Benefits of Health Data Management During Reopening and Beyond
Workplace health and safety has reached new levels of both salience and importance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With reopening plans rolling out everywhere, many employers are scrambling to figure out how to make their workplaces as safe as possible.
While mandating physical distancing and masking are very effective protective measures, the role of informatics in achieving and securing a healthy workplace are often overlooked in favour of these more front-line measures.
In fact, most workplace policies use a blend of preventative and reactive approaches, but refrain from taking a truly proactive stance due to the effort of implementing such systems. Ironically, this increases risk of infection, which can result in additional stress on the organization as a whole.
Hence, taking a proactive approach – while more costly and complicated upfront – can really save you in the long run.
Data is key to planning and implementing proactive interventions, and so informatics play a key role in an efficient and effective health and safety plan.
It has been found that the positivity rates of organizations that use health data management programs have a significantly lower workplace positivity rate than the general population, and in addition, so is the average rate of recollection. The increased reliability of such systems can be attributed to the regular testing that such systems permit, as well as the efficient and automatic safety analysis that the systems undergo continuously in real-time.
This article will explore how you can use informatics to optimize your return to office safety policies and protocols.
Pivot Your Pre-Existing Health & Safety Systems
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Your organization should already have some data infrastructure in place to deal with occupational health and safety concerns and cover all your compliancy-bases.
The difference between previous needs and current demands is urgency and scale. Informatics can assist with meeting both of these requirements as it streamlines and automates much of the data transferring, processing, and responses. This minimizes the time between detection and action and erases the need for restrictions on number of tests, both of which allow you to catch infections early on and prevent further spread.
In addition, these data systems minimize the loss of information or mismanagement of data that results from human error, making the workplace all the safer and keeping your workplace running smoothly.
Make Data Central
Informatics technology platforms streamline data between labs, healthcare providers, and employees, eliminating discrepancies and miscommunication.
Moreover, these systems are built to handle sensitive patient data and sample information securely and compliantly.
Metric reports and workflow analyses can be generated on-demand for easy viewing for those responsible for workplace health and safety, resulting in more informed decision-making and continual improvement of programs and processes. Platforms can also be used to coordinate administrative data.
In addition, data management becomes even more essential when it comes to detecting variants of concern – a crucial function considering the significant impact on the health and safety of your employees it can have.
Take Advantage of AI Capabilities
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other related tech-based strategies are often integrated into the fabric of data management programs. The functionality they provide improves the results of such systems significantly, most notably when it comes to logistics, such as selecting a laboratory facility, determining the appropriate testing methods, and facilitating the consent authorization process.
In addition, informatics systems with AI can provide both detailed historical and predictive analytic reports on the fly to provide information not only about COVID test result data but also more intricate information such as employee compliance with safety protocols or workflow issues that have been or may be sites of concerns. In this way, action can be taken not only in a reactive sense but also in a predictive sense to make the workplace even safer and minimize damages, risks, and adverse health conditions.
Don’t Forget About Mental Health
The pandemic has often been cited as the cause of a collective trauma, which will cause lingering mental health issues for many even as the physical threat of the virus dissipates. Particularly when regarding returning to the workplace, it is common for employees to experience some anxieties as the world reopens.
You can’t build trust and peace of mind without addressing the mental health impacts of the pandemic. With the time and cost savings you benefit from with the use of data management systems and software, as well as the scalability capacities it supports, you can expand your healthcare offerings to cover more holistic employee wellness, ensuring a healthier and happier workforce.
Through such systems, your employees can have access to articles, videos, classes, and other valuable resources that can directly benefit mental health. The fact that this access is provided through a third-party system mitigates the awkwardness and stigma experienced by employees when talking to their managers about their struggles which so often deters them from seeking help.
Predicting the Future of Work
What the office will look like post-pandemic is still a mystery for most.
However, the use of analytics that informatics systems provides can help garner a sense of the future, which can help inform decision-making and planning for the future. This can come from the synthesis and analysis of both corporate data and employee survey results.
Regardless of the model used by any given organization, everyone can benefit from informatic systems post-pandemic.
Horizant specializes in providing tailored software solutions suited for your unique needs. With extensive work in both corporate and healthcare fields, we can help you find a system that can help you manage your data to ensure a healthy workplace and a smooth transition to the new normal, whatever that looks like for you. Contact our team today to find out more.