3 min readSatya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, recently said, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”
It’s a wonderfully pithy statement on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business operations in 2020. Should it take a global crisis to accelerate digital strategy?
There’s no denying that the current crisis is challenging practically every business and organization to rethink their business strategy and how digital supports it. It’s safe to predict many of the long-term course corrections expected, including visibility up and down on supply chains and more predictive analytics based on big data stores using AI/ML.
But what about the short-term, tactical applications of technology, those creative applications of emerging and new tech that will help businesses get through the immediate crisis at hand? Technology like the contact tracing infrastructure created through the collaboration between Google and Apple is purpose-built with a lifespan to match the COVID crisis. Do these technologies offer broader uses, or are they indeed "throwaway" once the pandemic is behind us?
Technology designed to meet today’s needs
Another example of an application born from this crisis is a COVID-19 triage chatbot developed by SoftServe’s Healthcare R&D team. This application is being applied by healthcare systems to triage patients before they arrive at healthcare facilities. It utilizes a multichannel chat-based interface that can be deployed on websites or through texting. Its applications in healthcare are apparent, as is its promise in ongoing—post-COVID—patient engagement.
However, this application has at least five other applications outside of healthcare, including:
Workplace Safety – As businesses re-open, a worker's exhibit of illness symptoms will require careful attention. Companies could utilize SoftServe’s COVID-19 triage chatbot over SMS to allow employees to answer questions daily, reducing the company's risk and exposure and improving worker confidence.
School Safety – Similarly, students and teachers returning to school in the fall, from kindergarten to college, could pre-screen via SMS daily to meet CDC and state requirements imposed on school districts.
Restaurant and Recreational Venues – Businesses as diverse as restaurants, gyms, casinos, and movie theatres are finding themselves required to check patron’s temperatures at the door and ask basic health questions. Utilizing a chatbot during a reservation process could streamline the process of screening customers.
Event Safety – Public events from professional to peewee sports, concerts to conferences, could leverage the COVID pre-screening chatbot during the arrival process to identify attendees with symptoms or recent exposure.
Church and Civic Safety – Churches, civic and membership clubs, even polling places, might use the COVID-19 triage chatbot to screen members and attendees during registration or sign-in, reducing risk and exposure and meeting state requirements.
The utility for an application such as SoftServe’s COVID screening chatbot, even beyond healthcare, is obvious. Perhaps the most notable impact of the transformative technologies emerging from the pandemic is their application practicality. With over 2,000 successful projects completed to date, SoftServe has been the trusted product development and design partner to many of the most innovative and respected companies worldwide. To learn more about the COVID-19 triage chatbot, and its implementation into your facility, contact SoftServe today.
