Aguru completes contact tracing trial at Adcock Ingram Critical Care

28th July 2020 By: Natasha Odendaal - Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

Automation and digital transformation advisory and project management services Aguru Business Solutions has completed the proof of concept (PoC) trial for its newly developed Safe-Trace Contact Tracing system at Adcock Ingram Critical Care.

The system, built in partnership with Johannesburg-based Hive-IOT, aims to assist employers, medical practitioners and authorities with contact tracing using a Bluetooth-enabled device or “tag” that registers contact when the devices are within 2 m from one another.

Launched on April 30, Adcock Ingram Critical Care was one of the first companies to evaluate the system in late May and committed the first order for a PoC deployment.

“When our first Covid-19 infection was reported at our Aeroton factory, we knew that we had to work quickly in order to accelerate the contact tracing process,” said Adcock Ingram Critical Care quality assurance, regulatory affairs and compliance head Lucelle Iyer.

The group partnered with Aguru and Hive-IOT to source a practical contact tracing solution, as opposed to the time-consuming manual contact tracing and manual trace record, for the more than 1 000 employees based at the Aeroton site.

“The Safe-Trace system assisted us to clearly track who had contact with the infected person and we were able to instantly generate a report. This information will assist our facility to better manage the tracing of all possible contacts.”

The system incorporates the requirements of the Protection of Personal Information Act when managing data and only stores time stamps and digital identification numbers, thus avoiding any risk of personal information being recorded.

The information is uploaded to a secure cloud when the device is in the proximity of a strategically placed Internet-connected gateway.

“If a person is diagnosed with Covid-19, only an authorised administrator can initiate a trace and get a report of all the devices that were in contact with the diagnosed person’s device.”

This list can then be mapped by the employer to inform the traced contacts to go for testing and quarantine.

“The working relationship between Aguru and Hive-IOT has been seamless and the company’s requirements based on the need has been met,” Iyer commented.

“When lockdown started, we knew time was of the essence. We had to get help to the authorities by using Fourth Industrial Revolution technology. We got to work and partnered with a team with proven capabilities. We are extremely impressed with Hive-IOT and also the teams from their sister company The AM Group,” said Aguru founder Johan Louw.

“Lockdown brought a new challenge to our agile development process. Aguru was clear in their vision of the system and our engineers had to be innovative to work to the schedule. Initially all work was done from home,” added Hive-IOT cofounder and director Altmar du Toit.