IBM to Help Companies Determine Pandemic Preparedness

IBM to Help Companies Determine Pandemic Preparedness

IBM today unveiled its Contingency Planning Assessment (CPA), aimed at helping businesses understand their potential exposure to a pandemic outbreak, and implement strategies to safeguard employees and maintain operations should such an outbreak occur. The first-of-its-kind assessment can be deployed with small businesses, as well as a large global operation with multiple sites, and will be available later this month.

The new IBM service will provide an independent review of an organization’s pandemic response program based on industry best practices, government, World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, and the decades of experience of IBM’s crisis response team in managing actual disaster situations. CPA also helps clients identify gaps and develop action plans to mitigate exposures.

In the event of a pandemic outbreak, businesses may face situations in which many of its employees will be unable to work. According to the US Pandemic Implementation Plan, should a pandemic occur, employers should assume that up to 40 percent of their staff will be absent for periods of two weeks or longer. Multiple waves of infections could last between two and three months.

Read the complete Press Release