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. 2023 Feb 22;20(5):3899.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20053899.

Designing Digital COVID-19 Screening: Insights and Deliberations

Soojeong Yoo  1 , Natalia Gulbransen-Diaz  2 , Callum Parker  2 , Audrey P Wang  3   4
Affiliations

Designing Digital COVID-19 Screening: Insights and Deliberations

Soojeong Yoo et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, public health control and screening measures have been introduced at healthcare facilities, including those housing our most vulnerable populations. These warning measures situated at hospital entrances are presently labour-intensive, requiring additional staff to conduct manual temperature checks and risk-assessment questionnaires of every individual entering the premises. To make this process more efficient, we present eGate, a digital COVID-19 health-screening smart Internet of Things system deployed at multiple entry points around a children's hospital. This paper reports on design insights based on the experiences of concierge screening staff stationed alongside the eGate system. Our work contributes towards social-technical deliberations on how to improve design and deploy of digital health-screening systems in hospitals. It specifically outlines a series of design recommendations for future health screening interventions, key considerations relevant to digital screening control systems and their implementation, and the plausible effects on the staff who work alongside them.

Keywords: COVID-19; Internet of Medical Things (IoMT); Internet of Things (IoT); design; digital health; health screening; health services; hospital; implementation; qualitative study.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Change in agency from manual to eGate. Left: Manual screening methods; Right: eGate digital screening system.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Contrasting the manual system with the eGate system.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Publication types

Grants and funding

This research received an institutional COVID-19 grant from Sydney Children’s Hospital Network.
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