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Campuses quickly developed and adopted numerous strategies for frequent COVID-19 testing and data reporting in order to ensure the safety of students, faculty, staff members, and the neighboring community. Variations in COVID-19 testing strategies depended on factors such as the presence of a medical school or lab on campus, the amount of on-campus housing and the scale of campus social life, the design and operation of dining facilities, and the potential for certain programs to be offered via remote learning. UMass Amherst, for example, recently imposed a two-week lockdown in response to rising COVID-19 rates on campus and in the community. Routine reporting of metrics such as positive test rates, number of completed tests, cumulative cases over the course of a term, wastewater samples, and isolation and quarantine capacity builds trust not just with the college community but with the public.

Herd immunity for COVID-19 through vaccination is still months away, according to U. S. health experts, but even then, many epidemiologists warn that the pathogen, in some form, will circulate for years, requiring employers to take long-term steps to protect employees. Because the risk of spread is heightened in densely packed workspaces, a testing program, combined with other preventative measures, such as masking and contact tracing, can reduce risk by identifying infected employees and moving them to quarantine. California-based employers must “provide testing to employees who are exposed to a COVID-19 case, and in the case of multiple infections or a major outbreak, implement regular workplace testing for employees in the exposed work areas,” under CAL-OSHA emergency regulations On Wednesday, March 10, 3p ET, Healthcare IT Leaders along with BD, makers of the BD Veritor™ System for Rapid Detection of SARS-CoV-2, will host a webinar explaining how to set up a worksite testing program, and best practices for large-scale COVID-19 employee testing programs. This event is ideal for any business considering or conducting employee COVID-19 testing and offers valuable insights for executives responsible for operations, health and safety, human resources, finance, and legal/compliance.

As with any large software project, however, organizations risk disruption during a Workday installation because the internal resources needed to support the project are often the same technical and functional resources responsible for the existing, legacy system that Workday will replace. That’s why bringing in outside help to support legacy HCM or ERP software is a critical step for organizations implementing Workday. While it’s valuable for current employees to devote their time to executing a Workday implementation, organizations benefit from hiring an outside project manager and staffing a project management office with PMs who have Workday experience. Experienced PMs can help an organizations balance these various factors over the course of a Workday implementation to minimize the impact on both day-to-day operations while helping the organization get the most out of the software in the long term.

They are competing in the XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge, an international team competition focused on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to predict COVID-19 transmission rates and help decision makers implement the most effective policies at a local level. The teams in the competition were given access to foundational models from Cognizant’s Evolutionary AI team and data compiled by Oxford University’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Now, the finalists are being asked to take our models one step further and recommend appropriate government response, again based on real data, which balances infection and death rates against economic impact and feasibility. A total of $500,000 will be awarded to the winning teams, with prizes given to teams with the most accurate predictive models for daily COVID-19 cases and with the prescriptive models that best minimize infection cases and economic costs to communities.