City f irms to use digital health passports to get bank staff back to off ice

MAJOR City firms will start using digital health passports from next month as part of an ambitious plan to get staff back to offices.

Covid-19 testing firm Prenetics has signed deals with around 100 companies – including investment banks based at Canary Wharf in London – to help get staff back to work safely.

Employees using its Digital Health Passport will download an app onto their mobile phone, which will store results of their Covid tests and vaccine certificates when they have had their jabs.

On arrival at the office, staff will scan their phone on a machine at the entry turnstile. They gain access if the green light gives them the all-clear. The health passport technology can also be integrated into some entry swipe cards and corporate ID badges currently used to access buildings.

Prenetics is already providing many companies with on-site testing and has been using health passports for clients including the Premier League, the England Cricket Board and major film and TV producers. It will announce which office-based businesses have signed deals to use its testing systems and health passport technology in the coming weeks. They are understood to range from startups to banks, healthcare companies and private members’ clubs.

Prenetics will also operate testing ‘pods’ for companies and is handling many of the rapid 15minute ‘lateral flow’ tests that the UK Government is offering to fund for all firms with more than 50 employees.

Avi Lasarow, European chief executive of Prenetics, said he plans to set ‘the gold standard for testing and health passports in offices’ when the rollout starts next month. He said: ‘It’s no different from going into a bank in Canary Wharf when they look at your ID pass. Our vision is to rapidly scale up to having more than 100 office campuses across the country which people can get tested at and then link the test results to our health passport to access the office.’

Mr Lasarow said introducing testing and health passports into offices is the natural next step to help restart the economy.

He added: ‘In the same way we are doing this for major global brands, we want to bring it to smaller companies so they can have a pop-up testing pod, you get your swab taken, your test run, and therefore grant access to the workplace. There is a real role to play for private companies supporting Government and getting Britain back to work, play and holidays.’

From April, Prenetics hopes that its health passports could be extended across all sectors of the economy, including restaurants, pubs and shops. Prenetics’s passports are a partnership with the Digital Health Pass technology developed by IBM.

IBM is also rolling out its Digital Health Pass through Covid-19 testing providers Circular 1 Health and Oxford Nanopore.