Sam’s Club launches touchless employee health screening kiosk for COVID-19
Sam’s Club is rolling out an in-house developed, automated health screening kiosk designed to enable a safer, quicker and more reliable COVID-19 screening procedure for employees to its nearly 600 clubs nationwide.
The contactless kiosk features patent-pending technology that includes a built-in body temperature scanner, a camera sensor able to verify identity from a distance and a digital health screening questionnaire activated by hand motion. It is 100% touchless.
The company shared the story behind the innovative technology in an interview with one of its product managers, Ben Ellison, and Ginese Colletti, the director of software engineering, in a post on its web site.
Excerpts from the post are below.
How we approached the situation
The creation of the kiosk began with a question: how can Sam’s Club conduct health screenings in the most safe and efficient way? Manual screening presented risks and third-party options could not accommodate the needs of all of our clubs. So, what did it take to find an answer?
A little bit of ingenuity and a lot of collaboration from one of Sam’s Club’s cross-functional teams.
“After reviewing hundreds of third-party options, our team realized Sam’s Club had the capability to build a better equipped kiosk ourselves,” Ben said. “So that’s exactly what we did.”
Describing the benefits behind this decision, Ginese said:
“Few health screening options on the market are truly touchless. We knew if we could create our own first-class screening technology and make our kiosk completely contactless, Sam’s Club would be able to lower risk of exposure for our associates, streamline the screening process and seamlessly grow the product.”
How we developed our solution
With the set goal to create Sam’s Club-specific screening technology, the end-to-end team—including associates from operations, technology, product and more—sprang to action.
Highlighting the speed and spirit of innovation involved, Ben said, “Despite stay-at-home orders and restricted access to our equipment, software engineer RyanGiovacchini was able to create a working prototype within a single day using his 3D printer at home.” Talk about building a solution in-house!
Then, with prototype in hand, the team began testing and collecting feedback inside the club. “We’ve made over a hundred iterations based on what we learned from our associates,” Ginese said. “From adding instructional signage to ensuring the protection of sensitive health data, we are taking all the essential steps to optimize functionality, safety and security.”
Now, the iterative process hums along at full speed as Sam’s Club prepares to bring the automated health screening kiosk to all of its nearly 600 clubs.