Development and Use of a COVID-19 Back to Work Symptom Assessment Tool to Reduce COVID-19 Disease Exposure

Abstract

Technology solutions to mitigate repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic include tools that provide guidelines and interfaces to guide behavior, reduce exposure to the disease, and enable policy-driven avenues to return to a sense of normalcy (e.g., work and school). This paper takes a design science approach to present the justification, design, development, and early assessment of a return-to-work COVID-19 symptom checker and risk assessor. The system was implemented across 34 institutions of health and education in the US State of Alabama, including over 174k users with over 4 million total uses between July 2020 and April 2021. Users complied with use policies more than 50% of the time, with k-12 schools showing higher compliance than colleges and universities. Using system use data and focus group discussions, findings indicate the system was generally accepted, used regularly, facilitated reduction of disease exposure, and enabled a path back to work and school.