Over the last two years of project implementation, HEALTHY SAILING has aimed to provide an integrated, evidence-based methodological approach to improve passenger shipping service quality, facilitate pandemic recovery and make passenger shipping safer, more resilient, competitive, and efficient. These activities have produced evidence to feed into project guidelines, outputs, and training. The consortium is focusing on completing intervention studies and moving from the verification phase to the integration phase.
Key activities and progress:
- Guidelines for COVID-19 PMM in routine ship operations, traveler vaccination, and specificities of expedition vessels’ medical operations are under development and will be pilot-tested for applicability
- Measures for healthy environments and early health threat detection onboard are being developed, tested and validated through a:
- Syndromic Surveillance System (SSS) for infectious diseases: provides a systematic and uniform approach to surveillance on passenger ships.
- E-Surveillance System for health threats (E-SS): provides integrated system collecting input (demographic / voyage / medical data) to produce epidemiological information for early outbreak identification and ship reporting to the next port of call
- Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Immune System (AI-IIS): collects input from E-SS / onboard environmental monitoring and land-based epidemiological information. AI-IIS prototype will provide central hub for real-time awareness and health measure decision-making based on risk level.
- Software facilitating Water Safety Plan development in cruise ships, with effectiveness and feasibility to be tested through an intervention study
- Toolkit to enhance effectiveness of current disinfection practices and monitoring of disinfection
The project has also been working to address port /community needs and increasing travelers’ knowledge and awareness through:
- Development of an integrated e-pass using RFID-enabled devices to facilitate crowd control during embarkation and onboard, which also provides contact tracing functionalities.
- Establishment of an International Scientific Panel for infectious disease on passenger ships: global level forum for exchanging best practices, harmonizing practices to facilitate proportionate public health response measures.
- Blended learning toolkit offering innovative educational environments, training crew with augmented reality applications, and gamified training of passengers
- Intervention study on board a cruise ship to assess effectiveness of different interventions through multiple, objective, evidence-based evaluation methods as part of the induced behavioral change in hand hygiene toolkit
These efforts help ensure that large passenger ships, including cruise ships, ferries, and expedition vessels, can operate more safely and efficiently, protecting the health of both travelers and communities.
Read here the latest publications from Healthy Sailing.
