Block Society Co-Founder Faris Khan Executes Launch of Automated COVID-19 Screening Solution “IHS Screening” at ISNA High School in Mississauga, ON

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BLOCK SOCIETY (“Block Society” or the “Society”) is pleased to announce that its Co-Founder Faris Khan, age 17 from St. James, Barbados, is leading the first integration and launch of IHS Screening in an educational institution after completing development and testing of the solution in Q4 2021. Block Society recently finalized an integration agreement (the “Agreement”) with ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) High School, an Islamic faith private secondary school in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Under the terms of the Agreement, the Society will issue an end-user license for IHS Screening to ISNA High School, while also providing initial onboarding services and ongoing technical support. By introducing IHS Screening to its students and staff, ISNA High School can efficiently undertake daily tracking of COVID-19 symptoms and possible exposure risks (the “Target Data”) for approximately 168 students, who can complete screening questionnaires themselves using the IHS Screening web-based interface on their personal devices (e.g., smartphone, laptop computer) before entering the school building.

Upon the reopening of in-classroom learning for ISNA High School pupils for the 2021-2022 school year, the Target Data was being recorded by staff members through manual inputs of students’ responses at an entrance checkpoint. Although this approach fully complied with Ontario’s provincial guidelines regarding the collection of the Target Data for educational institutions, the time-consuming nature of manual inputs made by a limited number of staff members often caused first-period classes to start behind schedule. In addition to mitigating these inefficiencies of time and labour, the approach of allowing students to self-screen through IHS Screening using a personal electronic device could also reduce the amount of time students spend waiting in queue, which can be a potential source of COVID-19 exposures.

Under Mr. Khan’s supervision, IHS Screening was developed as a secure web-based solution that can be used from virtually any device with an Internet connection (e.g., smartphone, tablet, laptop computer). Separate user interfaces and experiences were created for each of the Student, Teacher, and Administrator user categories described below:

Student: User profiles for 168 ISNA High School pupils in grades nine through twelve have been created based on current enrollment records. Logging in with their ISNA High School email address, Student users will be required to provide “Yes” or “No” responses to a standard COVID-19 symptom and exposure questionnaire. Upon submission of their daily screening data, all responses will be synchronized to a secure cloud database only accessible to Teacher and Administrator users of IHS Screening, who will review screening outcomes each morning (as detailed under the Teacher user category description below) to determine pupils’ admissibility to school that day.

Teacher: Multiple ISNA High School teachers have been issued login profiles on IHS Screening, providing access to its database of responses to complete the screening process before first-period classes begin. Teacher users will have the ability to locate a Student profile by name in the database either by scrolling through the roster in alphabetical order, or by typing the Student user’s first name, surname, or email address into a search bar. For easy reference, each Student profile in the database will have one of three status icons denoting the status of a given day’s screening; Grey X (screening not completed), Red X (screening completed, possible symptom or exposure indicated), and Green Checkmark (screening completed, no possible symptoms or exposures indicated).

Administrator: This “master” user category in IHS Screening has the same privileges as the Teacher category, and is the only category permitted to remove/modify Student users and add/remove/modify Teacher users, in addition to performing other administrative functions. In the current integration of IHS Screening at ISNA High School, Principal Salar A. Rasoul has been appointed Administrator.

To facilitate the installation of IHS Screening at ISNA High School, Block Society has procured and configured two solutions offered by Amazon Web Services including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (“EC2”, a scalable virtual server rental platform) and Amazon Relational Database Service (“RDS”, a simplified cloud database hosting service for applications).

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/11541b36-85ab-45f3-8aa5-2a15a2b4b250

Through Block Society, in 2021 Mr. Khan also led educational sessions for computer programming through Islamic organizations in southern Ontario, including Muslim Neighbour Nexus (“MNN”) as well as the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”) parent organization. Classes taught by Mr. Khan, which primarily focused on the fundamentals of Python in addition to select advanced concepts (e.g., 2D lists), contained between 20 and 25 students ranging from eight to 53 years of age, who attended sessions in a “hybrid” model of online and in-classroom learning.

Later in Q4 2021, Block Society will evaluate the performance of IHS Screening at ISNA High School in collaboration with the school’s faculty to recommend adjustments based on feedback, as well as any potential changes to the COVID-19 pandemic situation in Ontario. Based on the results of this evaluation, Block Society intends to begin offering integrations of IHS Screening to public school boards in the Greater Toronto Area, potentially as early as Q1 2022. Block Society also plans to leverage Mr. Khan’s connections in Barbados to pursue the first international integrations of IHS Screening, tailored to conform to local public health regulations and guidelines.

For more information about IHS Screening, please refer to its page on the Block Society website at the following link: https://www.blocksociety.ca/ihs-screening

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/eaed670c-2df7-4a7a-bd5c-ebd894aa632b

Block Society Co-Founder Faris Khan commented, “Modern technology has granted us the ability to streamline the collection of virtually any type of quantitative data through creative and innovative ways of thinking, particularly with the advent of personal smartphones. Relatively simple tasks such as completing a COVID-19 screening questionnaire are not typically thought of as a prime target for automation. However, on a large scale, saving mere seconds can go a very long way. For perspective, the three sentences you just read in this quote likely took you approximately 15 seconds to read. When there are 168 screenings to be done each day at ISNA High School, an extra 15 seconds per student adds up to over a dozen hours each month that could be better utilized by students and faculty members. We developed IHS Screening with this efficiency as our main objective, thus improving the screening experience for students and reducing the time burden for teachers. Our initial integration of IHS Screening at ISNA High School was a success, and based on early-stage performance I am looking forward to discussing integrations with other schools and school boards in Canada, as well as international markets such as Barbados, my home country.”

On behalf of Block Society,

“Faris Khan”

Faris Khan, Co-Founder
Twitter: @FarisKh00

For further information, please contact:

Dorothy Bates, Public Relations Representative for Mr. Khan
St. James, Barbados
[email protected]
+1 246 538-1596

About Block Society

Block Society’s flagship python educational program was created out of a strong passion, a shared vision, and a ceaseless commitment to making learning easily accessible from anywhere in the world. Founded in 2021, Block Society’s unique approach to learning is designed to provide students with the opportunity to get an education on their own time. At the heart of everything that Block Society does is its commitment to accessible education and the success of students from all backgrounds and levels.

About ISNA High School

ISNA High school is a progressive, co-educational, Muslim secondary school for students in Grades 9 to 12. Located on the outskirts of Metropolitan Toronto, Canada, the school is run under the auspices of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Canada and accredited as an independent secondary school with the Ontario Ministry of Education. Part of the ISNA Canada masjid complex in Mississauga, Ontario, the school is equipped with modern state-of-the-art facilities and offers a challenging academic program in an environment shaped by Islamic values. The school prepares students for completion of the Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) and admission to colleges and universities in Canada, the United States and beyond. Alhumdulillah, all of our graduates have gone on to pursue post-secondary education with many receiving prestigious scholarships from top Canadian Universities. ISNA High School is open to Canadian residents and Visa students from around the world.