As health care professionals work on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re at risk of more than just contracting the virus. Witnessing and working to provide for patients every day—often under conditions where capacity is low and the right equipment may be in shortage—has a cumulative effect of draining each professional’s mental and physical well-being.

We’ve joined an effort with the Health Worker Data Alliance and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation to build a standalone application that will monitor the physical, psychological, and occupational experiences of health workers by administering recurring surveys. The data from these surveys will help institutions and policymakers assess which health-care workers need the most help, and how to prioritize their needs. The application will initially be deployed in English and Spanish for North American deployment, but we’ll be building in a way that accommodates the addition of more languages in the future.

Analysts from the initiative will provide an evolving set of visualizations and reports at different levels of depth—from single hospital systems to city-wide. Eventually, the initiative may add reporting for individual workers to self-monitor their working conditions and their own responses over time.

This stand-alone application will be free to use, and before it’s built you can still share the current survey with every health worker you know (including physicians, nurses, and anyone else who works in a hospital, including security and IT). Having enough data to draw actionable conclusions is what we need the most help with right now—input from the front lines of COVID care will help drive positive change for health workers in the United States.

We are always looking for ways to use our craft to improve the world around us, and are committed to doing our part to helping health care workers in this critical time.

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