Researcher Job van Exel attended a large-scale Fieldlab event at Johan Cruijff ArenA on behalf of the evaluation team of the CoronaCheck app. While there was a lot of public opposition to these experiments, according to Van Exel they can make a significant contribution to finding our way out of this pandemic.
As a researcher at Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM), Professor Job van Exel plays a ‘bit part’ in the current Fieldlab experiments. For example, you could recently find Van Exel among the spectators at Johan Cruijff ArenA, performing research during the match between Netherlands and Latvia. The Fieldlab experiments have caused quite a commotion – for example, the King’s Day party in Breda was called off after public protests. Van Exel believes the experiments have a strong social relevance, although he is disappointed that the participants aren’t required to all have themselves tested after attending an event.
The Fieldlabs are government-mandated field trials with public events: a football match, for example, or a conference, theatre performance or festival. Van Exel isn’t directly involved in the events as such. Rather, he’s been working on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in the evaluation team for the government’s CoronaCheck app, which is headed by EUR professor Wolfgang Ebbers.
The team is using the Fieldlab events as an early opportunity to test users’ experiences in a real-life setting. Van Exel: “You’ve got two apps: the notification app CoronaMelder, which has been live a few months already, and a new one: CoronaCheck. If you’ve received a negative result from one of the testing locations, this app allows you to make a QR code that you can have scanned at the entrance to show you aren’t contagious. During and after the trial events, we ask people about their experiences with the app.”
Test society
Van Exel explains that the app is actually part of a larger infrastructure that is currently being developed ‘in anticipation of the test society’. “Of course, we still have to deal with the aftermath of this pandemic, but we should also start readying ourselves for the next one. And who knows: there might be another wave. In a situation like that, you want to have a testing infrastructure in place that allows you to limit the social and economic impact of a pandemic.”
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This article was published on 26 April 2021 by Erasmus Magazine.