Port Medical Management Introduces App for Remote COVID-19 Testing

Port Medical Management has completed beta-testing on a new mobile app designed to allow maritime crewmen to administer their own COVID-19 tests, from any location, and receive fast tracked results following confirmation by a Port Medical Management team member.  The Port Medical Management SeaScan app, developed by mobile app specialists DOM&TOM (www.DomandTom.com), was commissioned by Port Medical founder and CEO Dean Crassas, inspired by his conversations with ship owners, agents, and P&I Clubs.

“Our industry is always interested in ‘better, faster, and less expensive,'” notes Crassas, “and Port Medical Management’s SeaScan app delivers on all counts.”

In 2020, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shipping industry faced an unprecedented challenge as most countries and airlines began enforcing mandatory COVID-19 testing for all travelers. Ship owners and agents quickly discovered the logistical difficulties of testing on-signing and off-signing crewmembers, and the need for expediting test results to allow for timely crew changes. 

Screenshot from the SeaScan app's interface

With the first wave of pandemic-related cases, Port Medical Management’s operations team took steps to ensure that the company was uniquely positioned to provide Rapid PCR and Antigen testing in all US ports. In short order, Port Medical Management became an industry leader in addressing this dilemma for owners and agents in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

“We’re seeing less stringent requirements for testing of late,” observes Crassas, “but the real risk of traveling crew members boarding vessels while unknowingly infected with COVID-19 remains a legitimate concern for ship owners. They still want and need this protection of testing, but there is growing resistance to the high costs associated with laboratory testing.”

Port Medical’s pursuit of a way to utilize the far less expensive, self-administered Antigen COVID-19 tests, in a manner that would allow those results to be tracked and confirmed, prompted his overture to DOM&TOM, who have provided digital solutions service to several Fortune 500 companies. The solution they produced is Port Medical’s new SeaScan app. This mobile app allows crew members to test themselves and includes a 3-step verification system, with photo confirmation and third-party corroboration of results by Port Medical Management.  This substantially reduces the cost for ship owners, and still provides an efficient means of protecting the crew members and others from spreading COVID-19 on vessels.

For more information on using this new, cost and time saving technology, visit Port Medical Management at www.portmedical.net or call at 713-526-PORT (7678).