App to help organisations with staff's vaccination, swab info

Organisations now have an online application that can consolidate their employees' Covid-19 swab test results and vaccination status into daily reports.

The developer of Sync says, with the app, organisations can help contain the spread of the virus in workplaces.

The free app was developed by Open Government Products, a division of the Government Technology Agency, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.

Workers currently self-declare their test results and vaccination records to their employers.

This means those working at multiple companies have to update and validate their records across different platforms and organisations.

"Employers, on the other hand, may not have the most timely data for the early detection of Covid-19 positive cases in the workplace to help contain the spread of the virus," said Open Government Products.

The platform was made publicly available for all organisations yesterday, after a soft launch last November.

It can be accessed through a browser, such as Google Chrome, by users with a valid Singpass account or by organisations using Corppass.

Employees using Sync must first consent to the platform sharing their vaccination status, as well as results of antigen rapid tests (ARTs) and polymerase chain reaction tests with their organisations.

Such information includes results of swab tests conducted at clinics, hospitals and other approved centres.

This information is retrieved from a central Covid-19 database connected to the platform.

Workers can also upload results of self-administered ARTs.

The information is consolidated into daily reports, which are then sent by Sync to the organisations.

Employees can also choose to remove their consent at any time, such as when they are changing jobs.

The platform currently has more than 150,000 users across 80 organisations.

They include healthcare institutions and ride-hailing companies Grab and Gojek, which were onboarded after its soft launch.

Grab and Gojek told The Straits Times that prior to using Sync, their driver partners had to submit ART results and vaccination statuses directly to them.

Gojek said this was done through online forms that it had created for driver partners.

Adjunct Associate Professor David Foo, who is medical director of the National Healthcare Group Heart Institute, said prior to Sync, there was no standard form across organisations using FormSG platforms to submit Covid-19 records.

Prof Foo, who is also a doctor at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and works with Woodlands Health, said the Sync platform needs a total of only three mouse clicks to submit an ART result.

Open Government Products said staff of schools under the Ministry of Education are also using the platform.

Students younger than 15 years old are currently ineligible as users as they do not yet have access to Singpass, it added in response to queries from ST.

The developer said it plans to expand the platform's scope to cover more than just Covid-19 data.