LONDON: Ideagen PLC, a leading supplier of Information Management software to highly regulated industries, announced a partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to support its vital collaboration and policy making work with member states and other interested bodies during the coronavirus pandemic.

The 73rd annual World Health Assembly took place earlier this week (May 18/19). In normal times there would be more than 60 items on the agenda for discussion, but this year there were only two, with the main one, unsurprisingly, being coronavirus and the global response to it.

The Assembly was due be attended by delegations from the 194 Member States of the WHO, as well as NGOs, philanthropic organisations and other interested parties. This year many delegations were led by Heads of States and the number of people attending was expected to be around 4,000. Normally this meeting would involve face to face gatherings and discussions in the Palais de Nation in Geneva, but social distancing measures required meant that was impossible this year.

Ideagen’s leading document collaboration and governance software, PleaseReview, provided the WHO with a solution to their problems. PleaseReview allows for the real-time collaboration on documents, offers a secure means of capturing comments and provides a full audit trail of responses, changes and agreements. When each word is poured over and debated by thousands of people and the outcome of those debates has such global significance, getting it right is of paramount importance to the WHO.

A spokesperson for the WHO, said: “PleaseReview is working with the World Health Organization in support of WHO’s COVID-19 outbreak response by providing services to WHO on a pro bono basis to allow WHO to conduct its first-ever digital World Health Assembly”.

Adopting PleaseReview meant the WHO could invite member states to conduct a first review of policy documents, that would normally be conducted face to face, in a secure, online environment. As well as ensuring social distancing was maintained, this also saved a huge amount of time, which is incredibly valuable during this uncertain period.

Ben Dorks, CEO of Ideagen, said: “We are delighted to support the WHO in their life saving work, especially at such a crucial period. Everyone at Ideagen has enormous respect for the work being done by the WHO, both in the fight against coronavirus and in their ongoing efforts to tackle other global health issues. The scale of the challenge facing them is enormous and we are extremely proud that we can offer them the use of PleaseReview, a product that will make that challenge a little easier to handle.”