Launching Ontario’s COVID-19 school screening tool
Editor’s Note: As Ontario’s schools reopen this week, students and educators across the province are returning to in-person classes. To help prepare for a safe reopening, the Ontario Digital Service partnered with the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health to launch a voluntary COVID-19 school screening tool. You can also find our code open and available for reuse and adaptation on our GitHub repository.
“As students across the province return to school, it’s more important than ever that we provide families with the tools and information they need to stay safe and healthy. Throughout the pandemic, our government has worked swiftly to leverage technology and innovation that puts vital programs and services at your fingertips. This tool is another example of how we’re building a government that works for you.”
— Peter Bethlenfalvy, President of the Treasury Board, who is now overseeing Ontario’s efforts to lead digital and data transformation for the people of Ontario, including oversight of the Ontario Digital Service
What is the COVID-19 school screening tool?
The COVID-19 school screening tool enables students and their parents or guardians to self-assess for COVID-19 symptoms. This provides a consistent method of screening students for COVID-19 risk prior to them arriving at school.
This tool is intended to help parents and students identify COVID-19 symptoms or self-identify risk factors like exposure to COVID-19 or returning from travel. After answering a few questions, the tool provides users with one of the following results:
- go to school
- do not go to school
When the tool gives a result not to go to school, it provides the user with information on how to self-isolate, and how to contact their local public health unit. The tool also advises the user on the following:
- next steps
- siblings or other people you live with who do not have symptoms
- going to school again
How was the tool built?
Ontario’s Digital Service Standard, open data and data sharing played a huge role in helping us build this tool in record time.
As mentioned, we built the COVID-19 school screening tool in the open, and our code is open and available for reuse and adaptation on our GitHub repository.
We used existing open-source code and design patterns from Ontario’s COVID-19 self-assessment tool which has been visited over 5 million times as of September 17, 2020. As was mentioned in our previous blog post, Ontario’s self-assessment tool was built using Alberta’s early self assessment code (which was pulled from the National Health Service’s tool in England). In the initial launch we used 30 per cent of Alberta’s code base and the remaining 70 per cent was adapted to suit the Ontario context. It’s important to note we continue to iterate and test with users.
The COVID-19 self-assessment tool also provided the foundation for our work in building the COVID-19 courthouse screening tool, which we developed as courts began to reopen. The COVID-19 courthouse screening tool helps people understand whether they should go to court in person, or seek alternative access, and was key in helping us quickly deliver the school screening tool.
How did these tools help?
The COVID-19 school screening tool is based off of the same technical product as the COVID-19 courthouse screening tool. Because of this, we were able to pull the symptoms screen from the COVID-19 courthouse screening tool, significantly speeding up the build. We then changed language to suit a different user group (students, parents and guardians, and educators) and how people would typically fill it out; for example, we swapped “conjunctivitis” for its more commonly known name, “pink eye.”
What makes the COVID-19 school screening tool different?
Whereas the COVID-19 courthouse screening tool is primarily filled out by adults upon arrival at the courthouse, the COVID-19 school screening tool can be completed earlier — either at home or on the way to school. The COVID-19 school screening tool was designed for quick, daily use and we’re happy to report that on average it takes users less than two minutes to complete.
Another key factor we observed when developing the COVID-19 school screening tool was that often parents or guardians would complete the assessment on behalf of students. As a result, we adapted the tool to allow the following options:
- student
- parent/guardian on behalf of a student
- employee (for example, teacher, office staff, custodian, bus driver)
- visitor
Our user testing identified this feature to make the experience easier and clearer, especially for those who speak English as a second language.
No personal data is collected
The COVID-19 school screener does not collect any personal information, and has no database associated with it. This makes using the tool completely anonymous.
We are continuing to collaborate closely with the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health who advised us on the tool’s usability, language and public health information.
Whether you work in a school or have children under your care who will be attending in-person classes, we hope you’ll consider using the COVID-19 school screening tool. We all have a role to play in the safe reopening of Ontario’s schools, so let’s all do our part to keep fighting the spread of COVID-19.
