A public journey planning platform and mobile application for accessing and travelling to Covid-19 test centres

在接下来的几个月里，英国将建立许多新冠病毒测试点。事实上，已经出现了很多。这些地点正在一系列地点建立，包括公园和游乐场所、医院、大学和主题公园。据估计，将会产生数百个。其中许多地点可能是接受医疗护理的不寻常地点，可能只有私家车才能到达。同样，通往这些地点的一些道路和出入口也将作出改变，以适应这种独特的情况。此外，许多这些地点可能在某些时间对人口群或群体有某些限制。需求有时可能非常高，导致交通排队和拥塞。如果这些挑战得到妥善处理，它将提高测试站点的效率和弹性，同时提高效率，确保更多的人及时接受测试，从而帮助支持英国的复苏。我们的愿景是通过一个平台的开发来帮助管理这些测试站点的操作和公共访问，通过提供工具来计划正确的旅程，在正确的时间，基于测试站点操作团队收集和提供的最佳信息和数据。简单来说，该平台将包括一个多式联运出行规划应用、一个创建和管理测试站点数据的系统，以及一个向第三方提供测试站点数据的API。我们的平台作为移动应用程序交付，将为用户提供自信地计划到测试站点的旅程的能力。它还将提供有关每个站点的信息、每个站点的考试接受者的资格、每个站点的具体信息，帮助管理需求，允许用户订阅接收有关其当地考试站点状态的实时更新，提供停车和其他交通相关信息。它还可以用于提供测试站点的繁忙程度，帮助平滑需求曲线。2020年9月29日更新：上述项目、里程碑和可交付成果已按预算按时完成。这项工作的扩展将使产品进入试验阶段，并使用未使用的资金在Covid-19测试中心对该应用程序进行实时评估。为了实现这一目标，我们将调查现有测试制度的结构，以最好地了解管理承包商、测试中心管理和向运营商提供应用程序的最佳商业模式之间的关系。作为这一过程的一部分，我们希望确定有兴趣参与试验的少数测试中心和管理组织，我们将与他们合作，以确定此类试验的范围。我们将记录试验的范围，概述以及在何处以及如何捕获结果，并将其用于平台的进一步改进和/或更新。最终将形成试验方法，概述试验中心和用户应遵循的活动和步骤，以使试验能够在不引入利益攸关方过多的行政努力的情况下进行。我们预计进行为期两周的试验（工作日和周末）。试验将全程监控。结果和发现将被记录在技术报告中。该报告还将确定该应用程序是否可以重新用于Covid-19管理和恢复阶段的后续活动，如疫苗接种计划和抗体测试计划。

Over the next few months many Covid-19 test sites will be set up across the UK. Indeed, there are already many appearing. These sites are being established in a range of locations including park and ride sites, hospitals, universities and at theme parks. It is estimated that hundreds will be created. Many of these sites may be unusual locations for receiving medical attention and may certainly only be accessible by private car. Equally some road operations and access/egress points to these sites will be altered to accommodate the unique situation.In addition, many of these sites may have certain restrictions at certain times for population cohorts or groups. Demand may sometimes be very high resulting in traffic queues and congestion. If these challenges are managed well it will improve the efficiency and resilience of the test sites whilst increasing efficiency and ensuring more people get tested in a timely manner, helping support the UKs recovery.Our vision is to assist through the development of a platform that helps to manage the operation and public access to these test sites by providing tools to plan the right journeys, at the right times based on the best information and data collected and provided by the test site operational teams.At its simplest the platform will consist of a multimodal journey planning app, a system to create and a manage testing site data and information on the journey planning app and an API to provide test site data to third parties.Our Platform, delivered as a mobile application, will provide the user with the ability to confidently plan a journey to test sites. It will also provide information about each site, the eligibility of test recipients at each location, specific information about each site, help manage demand, allow users to subscribe to receive real-time updates regarding the status of their local test site, provide parking and other transport related information. It can also be used to provide levels of busyness at test sites helping to smooth the demand curve.UPDATED 29th September 2020:The project, the milestones and deliverables detailed above have been completed on time and under budget. An extension of the work is proposed, that will move the product to a trial phase and use unspent funds to conduct a live assessment of the app at a Covid-19 test centre. To achieve this, we will investigate the structure of existing testing regimes to best understand the relationships between management contractors, test centre management and the best business model for provision of the application to operators. As part of this process we hope to identify a small number of test centres and management organisations interested in participating in a trial, who we will work with to confirm the scope of such a trial. We will document the scope of the trial outlining and where and how findings will be captured and used to inform further refinement and/or update of the platform. This will culminate in the Trial Methodology outlining activities and steps to be followed by test centres and users to enable the trial to take place without introducing excessive administrative effort by stakeholders. We anticipate running the trial for a two-week period (weekdays and weekends). The trial will be monitored throughout. Outcomes and findings will be captured in a technical report. The report will also identify if the app could be repurposed for later activities during the Covid-19 management and recovery phases such as vaccination programs and antibody testing programs.