Venues set to trial You Check health passport

0
7828

Working with the Music Venue Trust (MVT), start-up company You Check will test its new health passport with live audiences as a means to safely reopen UK music venues.

Pencilled in for the 100 Club in London and Bristol’s 250 capacity Exchange, the first test events can’t come soon enough. According to MVT research more than 400 grassroots music venues are at imminent risk of being closed permanently.

Launched in front of the pandemic, mid 2019, the You Check app was designed as a ticket/ID system to combat touts and secondary ticketing as well as providing a link between promoters and their full audiences, beyond the primary ticket buyer.

When Covid-19 hit, You Check looked to see how its notification system could be adapted to help with track and trace by connecting with attendees and tying in test results.

As a result, event goers can be channelled to test facilities replete with PHE approved kits, outcomes of which are loaded onto the app.

Scannable by venue door staff the You Check system has become a game changing/’game on’ health passport, verifying name, age, ticket and test result in one place.

“We’re working, not exclusively, with Innova in terms of testing – technology that looks for a viral load high enough to be contagious with 97 per cent plus accuracy,” Fred Krefting, founder and COO at You Check tells Event industry News.

“With Covid-19 the incubation period is two to five days. For the honeymoon phase after the test, it’s the shorter the better, which means you’re good to go to a show for 48 hours.”

And You Check is involved in the prudent push to get club doors open with partnerships beyond its own app, working with an anti-bacterial mask specialist and a lighting company, the latter eliminating pathogens via UV light radiation.

That guidance, testing, ‘ventilation’ approach combines to cut the local R rate down so low it bodes well for the upcoming test events.

“Hospitality is used to rules, it lends itself to this system, and we will, hopefully, have trials going by the spring,” Krefting says.

“It’s important to work alongside government when running these pilots and we’re grateful to the DCMS for giving us the go-ahead.”

The plan is for the March shows in London and Bristol to be at 25 per cent capacity, two sets of tests with the same people, and to build up from there at venues across the country.

Cost is key of course but if the numbers can be split between government, promoter, agent/band, venue and ticket buyer – or telling parts of that equation – it’s very manageable and, as Krefting points out, there’s plenty of scope for brand sponsorship.

“You Check’s identity first solution has a lot of potential to help venues and promoters manage risk,” Music Venue Trust CEO, Mark Davyd, says.

“It has a fast and thorough authentication process which enables health information to be stored against portable digital identity and Music Venue Trust is pleased to be working with You Check to explore how this technology might form part of a comprehensive process which enables us to reopen every venue safely and revive live.”

Adam Parry
Author: Adam Parry

Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.