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Silicon Roundabout startup Hack Partners has launched Mind The Gap, an app to help businesses keep their employees Covid-19 secure in the workplace
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The social-distancing technology anonymously uses audio & Bluetooth signals to alert app-users when they are too close to other staff members
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Distances can be configured based on government guidelines. No user tracking or personal data collection is in place, ensuring privacy for staff
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Developed to help Network Rail staff return to offices and now widely available
With businesses under mounting pressure to demonstrate how they are making their workplaces socially-distanced and Covid-19-secure, technology startup Hack Partners has developed Mind The Gap social-distancing app. After a successful pilot with Britain’s railway infrastructure owner Network Rail, the app is ready for industry-wide deployment.
Mind The Gap uses inaudible ultra high frequency sounds and Bluetooth to calculate the distance between mobile phones. The technology does not require an active internet connection, making it ideal for use in various environments, outdoors and indoors. It also has the option to customise the distance that triggers the alert so it can be adapted for any change in government guidelines.
Built with user-privacy in mind, Mind The Gap has no user-tracking in place: no sensitive data is collected, stored or shared. This means employers will not have the capability to monitor employees’ movement either past or present.
Haydon Bartlett-Tasker, COO of Hack Partners states:
“We developed Mind The Gap initially to help railway staff maintain social distancing whilst at work. We quickly identified it could be opened up to other industries which – like the rail sector – face difficult challenges in safeguarding their employees that work across a variety of environments. With the economy reopening, businesses are under immense pressure to trade safely in this ‘new normal’. Having trialled this tool with Network Rail we are confident that we can help businesses overcome the challenge of keeping employees socially distanced.
River Tamoor Baig, CEO of Hack Partners mentions:
“Anyone who simply wants to help their staff stay safe and maintain social distancing making their workplace more Covid-19-secure, this app will help them achieve that goal.”
Hack Partners developed the app with Network Rail to help bring the company’s workforce safely back to offices and operational buildings. Network Rail owns, operates and develops Britain’s railway infrastructure, 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges and viaducts, and thousands of signals and level crossings – as well as running 20 of Britain’s largest stations. The rail infrastructure owner was closely involved in the creation of the app and has successfully trialled it with a number of its employees and has now made it available for their 40,000 staff to use at their own discretion.
Martin Frobisher, Network Rail’s safety, technical, and engineering director, said:
“I am immensely proud of our entire workforce for the part they have played to keep the country running throughout the pandemic. For thousands of our staff that has meant working from home, and many will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But as we start to plan for a return to office working, we’ve been looking at absolutely everything to make sure we can continue to keep our people safe, and Mind The Gap is an important part of that.
“It will sit alongside all the measures we’re putting in place, from deep cleaning, clear signage, staggered shifts and flexible working and will really help remind people to keep their distance to keep themselves and their colleagues safe.”
Network Rail rolled the app out to the company phones of a number of teams that have needed to return to an office environment, including those responsible for developing timetables in its Milton Keynes HQ, and workers in a Sussex maintenance depot. Feedback was collected from users to judge both how the technology worked, and how useful employees found it.
Martin Frobisher continued: “We want to be at the forefront of industry-leading tech, to work with innovative companies like Hack Partners, and we’re delighted to be part of the development and deployment of Mind the Gap. It certainly doesn’t replace other measures we have in place but it’s a helpful reminder of social distancing and we’ve had very positive feedback from our trial users. The app is now available to use at the discretion of our people who return to offices and operational buildings.”
River Tamoor Baig highlights that Mind The Gap’s underlying technology has proven to be so promising that discussions have now begun with contact tracing app developers who are struggling to get accurate distance results.
Mind The Gap is available to businesses of all sizes to sign up for starting today.
About Hack Partners
Hack Partners is a RailTech startup based in London’s Silicon Roundabout. It provides computer vision, data science, and software development services for the rail industry. The company is behind the ‘HackTrain’ hackathon, an initiative that has resulted in several innovations being deployed onto the railway including Hubble, an AI-based vegetation management system.
