Facedrive Inc., a Canada-based technology ecosystem, has reportedly announced the deployment of more TraceSCAN wearable devices by Air Canada to curb the COVID-19 spread. The announcement was made following the initial positive results & user feedback, which will help expand the scope of the pilot arrangement into 2021.

According to Facedrive’s CEO, Sayan Navaratnam, the company prioritizes on ensuring the health and safety of Canadians during the ongoing pandemic. It is excited to boost its relationship with Air Canada, an industry leader in mitigating the pandemic impacts. Through the adoption of TraceSCAN, the flag carrier can explore additional safety layers for employees.

Facedrive Health is expected to deliver more TraceSCAN Bluetooth wearable devices to Air Canada later in December 2020 to conduct contact tracing. Apart from the wrist band version of the company’s wearable devices presently used by the airline, employees will now gain the option for a key fob version, which can be attached to a lanyard.

TraceSCAN has been effectively integrated, maintaining an adoption rate of 99% among participating employees and nearly 30,000 interactions being tracked to date. The team also has enhanced the contact tracing platform by adding more features like real-time interaction analytics, graphical representation of contact histories, and advanced risk calculation algorithms.

The team at the University of Waterloo lead by Professor William Melek and Professor Patricia Nieva has showcased the importance of adopting AI (artificial intelligence) in contact tracing. The team also has identified contact histories of up to the 4^th degree for users who are infected with COVID-19. The TraceSCAN team has a firm belief that the feature can considerably reduce the risks of the disease spread within an organization. The team is presently focusing on enhancing the feature by assigning a risk factor to employees in an organization when the user tests positive for COVID-19, based on the degree of proximity, contact, and duration of interaction.