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Shropshire ITC have also featured on The Digital Solutions Podcast, to hear direct from the business about their support and what else the business has been up to, you can listen here:
PROJECT OVERVIEW: Shropshire ITC is an IT and Communications company based on the outskirts of Shrewsbury and signed up with Digital Solutions in November 2018. They have developed a student safety app which, after working collaboratively with a number of key university staff, has reached the stage where we have been able to support the rollout of the testing phase of this app with students. It is a welfare app that allows registered users of Safestep to undertake journeys on their own, safe in the knowledge that, should their journey be interrupted, a designated next of kin would be alerted to their current location. Safestep is not an intrusive tracking app that constantly logs and reports your location. Rather it is there to offer comfort that, in the event of something happening during your journey your designated next of kin is alerted.
Safestep is simple to use, allows to to add multiple locations and next of kin's to be added and is supported by both the police and fire and rescue services.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES: The aim was to take a collaborative approach with the University Centre Shrewsbury to support with the development and testing of this student welfare app. This has included having a stand at Fresher’s Week and virtual Fresher’s Week to gauge the demand stimulation and analyse data to create a ready-for-market product which could offer valuable support to not only students but other targeted groups too. Further support has come from academics with the application process for the University of Chester’s Ethics Committee which gives access to larger testing groups of their target audience.
PROJECT SOLUTIONS: The collaboration has seen Shropshire ITC, the University Centre Shrewsbury and the Digital Solutions team go on a digitally innovative journey. Testing is now underway and it is hoped that this student welfare app will be rolled out across universities throughout the country.
Shropshire ITC says: "We have worked hard with UCS and Digital Solutions and we believe that Safestep not only offers a valuable welfare tool to students across the country. Very early we understood that students would not want an app that tracked and reported their every move. Safestep only records locations when you start a journey and on the successful completion of the journey all records are deleted. It is only under exceptional circumstances that journey details are kept and then they are kept in an encrypted form on secure servers.".
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