Terra Dotta Developing Tech Tool to Manage Health and Safety in the Return to Campus

Terra Dotta is drawing upon its experience providing higher education travel, study abroad and international program management solutions to develop a new tool for mitigating health risks and monitoring student health as colleges and universities reopen their campuses. The project is a collaboration with the Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale School of Medicine and law firm White and Williams LLP.

The cloud-based solution will "enable institutions to publish guidelines and standards of conduct for social distancing, mask requirements, and other health and safety guidelines to students, faculty and staff returning to campus through a checklist of required documents," according to a news announcement, and allow institutions to "record confirmation of readership and agreement to adhere to the guidelines." It also includes a mobile app where users can access guidelines, receive updates and participate in contact tracing.  

Many of these capabilities are similar to Terra Dotta's existing solutions, which provide a platform for communicating with students and faculty, publication and distribution of checklists and codes of conduct, assessments to measure comprehension, digital signatures, mobile app notifications and more. The new solution will also build on the health, safety and risk expertise of Yale and White and Williams.

"We have an established set of best practices and guidelines for maintaining the health and safety of students, faculty and staff once they return to campuses, however communicating the specific regulations and policies interactively to ensure participation and widespread adherence is a very real challenge for all universities and colleges," said Marcella Nunez-Smith, director of Equity Research and Innovation at Yale School of Medicine, in a statement. "By enabling proper health and risk mitigation guidelines with the right technology platform and engagement capabilities, we'll be able to give students and institutions a higher level of confidence in monitoring and improving student health."

For more information, visit the Terra Dotta site.

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

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