Saving Lives with Access Control during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The managers of a residential facility for people who are 55 years of age and up were concerned about the older population at risk to contract COVID-19, so they came up with a creative idea to use the access control system to help them identify who might be sick and immobilized by the virus. After a call to the Sales team at Open Options, help was on the way.

Open Options helped this DNA Fusion user set up the capability to generate a “non-use report” to flag in the system those residents who have not presented their credential at their apartment entrance within a pre-determined period of time. Seeking to be proactive, the managers of the residential community wanted to use this as an indicator possibly highlighting ill residents who would require assistance.

“The residential facility managers wanted to provide a value-added service for the mature resident population, while not being perceived as overly intrusive,” said Daniel Cosgrove, Sales Manager at Open Options. “We worked closely with our customer to develop the custom report, and we delivered it in short order.”

The Sales team at Open Options served as the quarterback to huddle up and activate the team. They connected Open Options Professional Services with the residential facility directly for input and feedback, and then organized the efforts of the Open Options development team to generate the custom report designed to highlight non-use of the card reader, which is installed at every door of every apartment to provide secure entry.

When the access control system detects that there has been no card reads by a resident during a pre-defined period of time, such as one day, then this is highlighted in an auto-generated report, followed soon afterward by a phone call to the resident to check on them and ensure their health and safety.

“This project to use access control to proactively, yet unobtrusively, identify and check on at-risk residents was a success, resulting in a satisfied customer,” added Cosgrove. “This was also a welcome relief for the dealer who had felt stuck until Open Options got involved.”