Remote access occupational health support system

The Remote Access Occupational Health Support System project aims to research the technical and market feasibility of providing self-employed, micro-businesses and SME's with remote access to high quality occupational health services. Our innovative digital occupational health portal and health surveillance programme will enable under-served smaller business to overcome the main barriers to accessing high quality occupational health services. New starter medical declarations, health surveillance, occupational health advice and access to rehabilitation support for mental health and physiotherapy are fundamental to reducing unnecessary sickness absence, supporting employers to retain valuable staff, increasing productivity, and enabling individuals to live better for longer. This innovation provides employers and employees with access to on demand occupational health support via a digital portal, including virtual management referrals and remote health surveillance (such as, hearing tests, lung function screening, skin surveillance and other key occupational health screens). Until now, smaller businesses and businesses in more remote locations did not get fair access to quality occupational health support because it was not economically viable for occupational health providers to deliver their services to such businesses due to either limited scale of service or constraints due to difficulty of physical access. This innovation will allow occupational health providers to deliver their services to businesses of all sizes and all locations, no matter how remote they may be, without the need to discriminate, favouring clients with large workforces and easy locations, as most currently do. Ultimately, this project will democratise occupational health services, and most importantly, ensure that all businesses and employees who require it, get the occupational health support they need, whenever they need it, where ever they are. This project will allow smaller occupational health businesses to provide their services on a wider scale by providing them with a digital solution that they would not have the finance or expertise to be able to develop themselves, leveraging technology to maximise the impact of their occupational health expertise.