Global healthcare event specialists, Ashfield Meetings & Events (part of UDG Healthcare plc), and sister company Ashfield Patient Solutions, have launched a joint effort to offer rapid Covid-19 screening at face-to-face events.
EventSafe – as the service will be called – will be available at events in Europe starting in January 2021. The group says the news is likely to be welcomed by many of the healthcare businesses that currently partner with Ashfield.
“Virtual meetings have obviously become the norm over the past nine months, and while many of our global clients have partnered with us to move beyond the Zoom call to much more audience-engaging broadcast-quality events, most are clearly missing that human connection element that only face-to-face can bring,” says Gavin Houston, COO for Ashfield Meetings & Events. “EventSafe is an incredibly exciting development for our industry and it’s set to be invaluable to our clients as they plan their programmes for 2021.”
EventSafe works by the Ashfield teams partnering with clients to develop event-specific protocols. Screening policies and attendee consent forms are also created and then, at the event itself, Ashfield’s clinically-trained Covid-testing professionals will set up the screening site and screen attendees. Results are received in just 30 minutes, enabling attendees to enter the ‘event bubble’, safe in the knowledge that everyone present screened as negative.
Nareda Mills (pictured), SVP and president of Ashfield Patient Solutions adds, “Our rapid Covid-19 screening is ideal for the on-site event environment, so partnering with our colleagues within Meetings & Events to create this unique service, made perfect sense. EventSafe provides a secure, pre-vaccine solution for our clients keen to hold face-to-face or even hybrid events in the early part of next year. We’re confident it’ll be seen as a great step forward for the vital events our clients need for the future health and wellbeing of patients.”
For more details of Ashfield’s EventSafe service, go to www.ashfieldmeetings.com
