Indonesian office “attendance” app Hadirr on Thursday launched a contact tracing feature that enables companies to detect virus exposure and interaction, manage employee proximity inside office buildings, and send notifications to staff members about potential exposure to COVID-19.
The feature relies on Bluetooth signals emitted from mobile phones to locate other co-workers nearby. It allows employers to identify who might have come into contact with someone infected. When an infected employee self-reports to HR, the system promptly provides a list of other workers who could have been in contact during 14 days, so that HR can send out an alert. This way, the system helps companies to prevent shutting down an entire office to avoid further transmissions.
Since the outbreak of the virus, many governments and tech companies have been rolling out contact tracing apps to help citizens monitor transmissions. Singapore was one of the first countries with a Bluetooth solution called TraceTogether. Indonesia also launched several apps with similar functions such as PeduliLindungi, 10 Rumah Aman, and Inarisk, with mixed success.
“We hope this new contact tracing service can help companies and the government in the implementation of the ‘three T’—test, tracing, and treatment—which is essential to reduce the alarming spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia, especially in office areas,” said Afia Fitriati, co-founder and CEO of Hadirr, and its parent company Gadjian. The new service is free for Hadirr users.
There has been an increasing number of coronavirus cases in office clusters in Jakarta and other major Indonesian cities in the past few months. By the end of August, around 150 clusters have been reported in the capital, so that Jakarta reinstated a city-wide lockdown on September 14.