Hospitals, care centres and pharmacies can now use technology to help manage the volume of people in a space and enforce social distancing, thanks to a new tech update by Ipsos Retail Performance.
The ‘occupancy’ measure, named the ‘Social Distancing Live Occupancy Counter’, is an updated version of the Shopper Count tool, which reports on customer numbers moving through entrances and exits in any given location, building a factual picture of the flow of store traffic hourly, daily, weekly and year on year.
Updated to show the live count of visitors at any given time, the tool’s new capability allows company decision-makers in hospitals, care centres and pharmacies to understand accurate building capacity in real-time.
This reduces the risk of any environments being overpopulated when the doors are open, and maintains social distancing guidelines.
Peter Luff, Ipsos Retail Performance President said:
“COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on where, when and how we are able to interact with our world. For the healthcare sector in particular, the new social distancing guidelines have made store traffic an even more crucial data metric.
“We know that decision-makers in healthcare are working hard to care for patients to keep our society functioning, while making sure their staff are safe.
“This new solution is our way to try and help social distancing work as effectively as possible, to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus, keeping both employees and patients safe.”
The technology works on a traffic light system, whereby ‘red’ is too busy and ‘green’ is acceptable capacity managed at a local site-specific level. This information is then shared on the Ipsos Traffic Count App in real-time, with alarms set up to staff letting them know any change of status at any threshold points.
The technology can even automatically open and close doors to keep patient numbers to specific thresholds and be used to drive clear signage to communicate levels of occupancy at any given moment to customers if necessary.
For more information about how the technology works, please visit: https://www.ipsos-retailperformance.com/en/services/people-counters/social-distancing-live-occupancy-counter/
