Live Internal Product Testing: How we used our very own COVID vaccine and test results product at our company retreat!
By Lisa Orr, Senior Product Manager at Human API
In the Winter of 2021, Human API decided it was high time to host an in-person retreat for the whole company to celebrate some big milestones. Many of us joined the company during the pandemic, and had never met any fellow coworkers face to face. It was time to fix that. Better yet, we traveled from across the country and world to meet at Yosemite Valley!
A few Human API team members checking out the amazing sights at Yosemite
Getting together as a group in person is no simple task today. Many people are still concerned about being exposed to COVID-19, and traveling to meet up at a large gathering can feel daunting. We knew if we wanted to run a successful, well-attended, and COVID-free company retreat, we needed to make sure there was a way to verify vaccination statuses and test results during the event.
Turns out, collecting digital health data is exactly what we do at Human API! We help consumers connect and share their health records with our customers - some of whom have created COVID health passes that allow consumers to safely attend live sports events, dine indoors at restaurants, or go back to the office with confidence.
With a product that allows consumers to find and share data to verify their health status and an upcoming retreat to prepare for, we came across the perfect “dogfooding” opportunity (trying out your own product to ensure it is high quality!).
Supporting our HR team’s COVID protocols for the retreat
Like many other companies, setting up new protocols to ensure a safe gathering fell on our human resources (HR) team. Helping our HR team enforce COVID measures meant first understanding what pain points they had around the COVID verification process. From a product management perspective, we map these pain points as “opportunities” on an Opportunity Solution Tree. If we can solve for the pain points, then we have a higher chance of solving for the outcome, which in this case is creating a safe retreat experience.
Opportunity Solution Tree for creating a safe company offsite event.
What are the state requirements for COVID verification?
First and foremost, we needed to be able to confirm whether an employee meets the COVID verification requirements or not. So, what are those requirements?
Human API clients provide COVID health passes for many different types of events. To best serve our clients, we share detailed information on COVID health records so the client can make the best determination on COVID verification given the context. After all, an outdoor sporting event will have different restrictions than a flight to Hawaii.
In the case of the Human API retreat there is only one context: a group of 50+ coworkers will be gathering in California in December of 2021 for 3 days. According to the California Department of Public Health, attendees needed to be either fully vaccinated or have tested negative for COVID in the previous 72 hours at the time of the event.
Making life easy for our HR team
We’re an API company (it’s in our name!) but using an API to access employee data is a rather large and expensive lift for any HR team (especially for a one-off event). Like any other HR team out there, they have a million other important things to focus on and not a lot of technical resources in sight. In order to best serve our team, we needed to provide them the information they required in a format that works best for them. In this case, it was a simple list with every Human API attendee’s verification status which can be reviewed online and offline.
Respecting the privacy of our fellow coworkers and maintaining transparency
Now this isn’t just any data we’re working with, this is Protected Health Information (PHI). Fortunately, Human API already takes the utmost care with handling PHI (see our privacy policy). We only want to capture health data that is absolutely necessary to determine COVID verification, restrict access to the captured data, and delete the data as soon as feasibly possible. We are also completely transparent to people both inside and outside our company about the data we access and how it’ll be used. We made it a priority to honor our commitment to consumer consent and privacy throughout this entire process.
Building, testing, shipping, and “eating” our own dog food!
To build the new COVID verification tool, we used many great features from the existing Human API platform including personalized communication, guided user journeys, and restricted health data collection and processing.
The only part of the solution that was net new was creating a model to verify whether a user has passed the COVID verification requirements. To solve this, the data team built a simple model and then tested the model on de-identified health record data.
The last step was setting up the client app, creating the email templates for automation, and kicking off the verification process!
Email sent to a offsite participant encouraging them to connect their COVID health records
The results are in: we all stayed safe at Yosemite!
Over 50 of our employees attended the company offsite at Rush Lodge in Yosemite. Leading up to the event, 75% of attendees attempted to connect their COVID health records via the Human API COVID verification product. Over 50% of attendees were officially verified as having met COVID verification requirements through the tool, and the rest had their COVID records checked when they arrived at the event.
Team photo at the 2022 company offsite
We got solid feedback about the dogfooding experience with many noting that using a digital verification solution (rather than just relying on CDC cards and paper documents on site) made them feel more comfortable in attending the event.
We also learned firsthand many new opportunities to improve both the client experience and the end user experience. With many eyes on the product from different departments and walks of life, we got some awesome insights into how to make the whole process friendlier to non-technical users and those less familiar with health data.
The HR team was particularly pleased with the process as we solved a big problem for them and it was rewarding to see their problems be solved with the verification tool in real time.
"Having a digital solution that was easy and trustworthy while still respecting people's privacy was key. It meant that we could inspire confidence and feel good about bringing people together to bond and have fun."
- Savanah Eichfeld, Director of Talent
End to end, the whole process of defining and building the solution took two weeks and was well worth the investment. New opportunities for improvement were uncovered and we all gained a bit more empathy for what our customers and end users experience every day with our product. Plus, we got to enjoy our time together at Yosemite knowing most attendees had digitally verified their COVID records.
Best of all, no one got sick after the event. We all left the retreat with a direct experience of the potential digital health data and technology holds in helping us stay healthy.
