Tracking COVID-19 With Records
May 04, 2021 by Devin Culham
In 2020, public safety agencies were met with more than their fair share of challenges.
But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, particularly in reference to COVID-19. Agencies are imagining new ways of utilizing technology solutions to help mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The State of Maine Judicial Branch (MJB), for example, is leveraging record management software to help eliminate the spread of COVID-19 in the states court system.
“One of the ways we use the records management system is if we have an incident where there might be a possible positive case, the officers will document that as an incident, as a case,” said Mike Coty, State of Maine Judicial Marshal.
By logging a possible positive case as an incident, courts across State of Maine Judicial can see which courts have been exposed to cases of COVID-19.
But the records management solution is also useful for tracking inventory too.
“The other way that we really are using it for COVID-19 is to track what we’re issuing for masks to people coming in and the number that we’re issuing,” said Coty. “And also, we’re tracking the number of people that we turn away at the door.”
The MJB has also come up with creative solutions to track and manage the flow of traffic within its court buildings.
“We count how many people are screened when they enter a courthouse,” said Barry Lucier, the MJB’s IT project manager. “Our COVID-19 response team and other leadership in the judicial branch are using some of that data to monitor and manage where people are coming into the courthouse to make sure that we are complying with restrictions on gatherings.”