TCS iON offers free digital courseware for frontline health workers to deal with COVID-19 patients

TCS iON, a unit of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), on Monday said it has launched a free online self-certification course -- Corona Warriors -- on its platform to prepare frontline health workers in dealing with COVID-19 patients.

The course has been designed and curated by medical experts of TCS Lifesciences unit, along with inputs from subject matter experts who are faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, according to a statement.

The course is a six-hour, self-paced self-certification programme that can be accessed from anywhere on any device, it added. "The programme has been especially designed for the paramedical and professional healthcare workers. It also offers profession-specific measures for nurses, pharmacists, receptionists, laundry, radiology, technicians and biomedical waste management staff," it added.

The course offers recommendations on various topics such as virtual support practice, infection control policies, mental health education, resident awareness, travel mode sanitisation, visitor movement management, social distancing protocols and laboratory testing guidelines by WHO.

The course is digitally available in English and offered through TCS iON Digital Learning Hub.

TCS iON said that with the rise of the COVID-19 cases, it has become critical for India to prepare its health workers as frontline warriors to deal with the patients and suspects.

"This will be one of the proactive response mechanisms that India should be prepared with to effectively deal with this unprecedented pandemic. With this course, TCS iON aims to equip a large number of current and future health professionals with all the precaution and control measures necessary for the initial handling of COVID-19 cases," it added.

In a separate statement, Digitate, a software venture of TCS, announced the release of 'ignio Cognitive Procurement' to help enterprises make smarter purchase decisions and take action faster.

"The mandate for procurement organisations today is to add value beyond spend optimisation. Moreover, the evolving situation around COVID-19 is forcing organisations to make some hard, unconventional decisions under constraints to manage demand and supply," Akhilesh Tripathi, global head of digitate, said.

He added that the solution facilitates finding hard-to-discern anomalies and delivers granular operational intelligence to help procurement experts make smarter decisions and take faster action.

"It will help organisations navigate through this crisis carefully and come out stronger. We are excited to launch this latest product in our suite of (artificial intelligence/machine learning) AI/ML-powered solutions for the enterprise," he said.