Campus Health Services is using its CarePass system to alert students and employees when swine flu vaccines become available on campus.
Campus health officials encourage students and employees to get vaccines for the seasonal flu and the H1N1 virus, and believe the CarePass system will make it easier for them to do so, Director Allan Markus said in a statement Monday.
“ASU welcomes … [the] CarePass technology to provide employees and students with another communication option,” he said. “We believe it can help us more effectively manage vaccine distribution.”
Lilian Myers, CEO of Allviant Corp., which designed CarePass, said the goal of the program is to provide a “virtual waiting room” and give notifications to students and employees when vaccines are available.
“The two-way interaction with campus health and the student means that the student gets to have a little bit more freedom and not be trapped in the waiting room,” she said.
Users can sign up online to receive a text message, an e-mail or a voice message that alerts them of important updates or when a nurse or doctor is ready to see them. The user can then reply, letting health officials know how far away he or she is.
“The point is to untether you from the Internet,” Myers said. “CarePass is essentially a fast-pass for students.”
Many students don’t predict or believe they will use campus health services, Myers said, but when they do need it, CarePass makes the process easier.
The CarePass program, which is only a trial program at ASU, comes at no cost to the University or to students, Myers said, adding that it is a way to test the program in a live environment before it hits the market.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Fawaz Al Fawaz signed up for CarePass e-mail alerts on Tuesday so he could stay up-to-date on information about the H1N1 flu.
“It’s just like a precaution for [not] getting the flu,” Al Fawaz said, adding that he signed up for CarePass “just to be on the safe side.”
Al Fawaz said he sometimes uses campus health services, though he also uses his insurance at other medical centers.
“If it’s something not that serious, I go to campus,” he said.
Al Fawaz plans to get the flu shot when he receives alerts about when and where they will be offered.
Reach the reporter at ndgilber@asu.edu.
