Despite the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be beyond its peak — at least in the northern hemisphere — , it had devastating effects on the economy. The decreasing number of new cases are the consequence of strict quarantines in many countries.
To restart economy, safety measures (e.g. social distancing, wearing masks) have to be kept. Airports and airlines suffered significant losses, the road “back to normal” will be tough. Social distancing puts an upper limit on maximum occupancy, and passenger confidence to fly is very low.
According to the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) survey, more than 70% of respondents are worrying about getting the virus from other passengers, from the flight crew, or by touching surfaces during travelling.
One solution — multiple use cases
The solution addresses three major use cases:
- Screening employees enables airlines to comply with COVID-19 related safety regulations, and prevent on premise infections. Additionally, it ensures employees and passengers that the company cares about their health and safety.
- Applying digital identifiers on physical objects (like lavatories, cabins, airport lounges), and logging cleaning / disinfecting events improves passenger trust by providing access to anyone to scan the QR code of the object and see its cleaning history.
- Checking passenger test result compliance enables airlines to maximize flight occupancy by segregating passengers into epidemic free and social distancing zones.
Airlines and airports around the world will restart operations during the summer, but — according to healthcare professionals — the threat of the second wave of the pandemic is imminent. Our solution helps the aviation industry to carefully prepare for, and potentially avoid devastating shutdowns due to a next wave.
“The massive experience of GE in the aviation industry, the unparalled IT security expertise and infrastructure scalability of GE and Microsoft, as well as the blockchain technology of TE-FOOD makes this offering the most powerful one on the market.” said Erik Arokszallasi, CEO of TE-FOOD.
Data security and privacy in focus
The solution enables airlines, airports and related transportation operation areas to set test result protocols and check the compliance to new COVID-19 medical screening for employees and passengers.
Personal information and test results are protected by encryption and access is solely controlled by designated airline employees and passengers.
Additionally, the offering is flexible and medical-test agnostic, which enables airlines to adapt as regulation and science evolves. By providing this application to airlines, more people can start to fly, and the industry can start to rebuild.
Airports and airlines can set their compliance protocols in the system, and their staff only sees if a passenger’s test result complies with that protocol or not. Non-compliance doesn’t mean that the passenger can not access a service. It means that compliant and non-compliant passengers have to follow different safety protocols.
“COVID’s global impact has been far reaching both from a medical and economic perspective. In April 2020, GE, TE-FOOD, and Microsoft invented and patented a technology solution to combat COVID in the airline industry, an invention which complements ICAO’s Public Health Corridor framework perfectly.” — said David Havera, GM of GE Aviation’s blockchain solutions.
The three companies are working on both airport and airline level, while working to drive industry standards.
Press release:
https://www.geaviation.com/press-release/digital-solutions/ge-aviation-launches-health-application-id-aviation-industry
TE-FOOD is the world’s largest publicly accessible, farm-to-table food traceability solution. Started in 2016, it serves 6000+ business customers, and handles 400,000 business transactions each day.
Website: www.te-food.com
