AXA PPP develops absence management system

Healthcare insurer to offer BT and Eckoh systems to its clients

Companies will use speech recognition to record sickness

UK health insurer AXA PPP Healthcare is developing a system to enable its clients to automatically manage sick leave within their organisations.

The system, called sickness Absence Management (Sam) from BT and Eckoh, will use advanced speech recognition technology to capture and record information from employees reporting their absence.

Staff will be able to record and manage day-to-day non-attendance and notify the employer of potentially high cost absences where early assessment and treatment can be instrumental in mitigating risk.

'Sam, complemented by our range of additional employee health support services, gives us an even more powerful offering in the corporate marketplace,' said Dudley Lusted, head of corporate healthcare development at AXA PPP Healthcare.

Alerts can also be generated to identify frequent absentees whose conduct should be addressed. Sam also collates and analyses employees' input to help track absence trends throughout their organisations.

This allows managers to identify absence hotspots and potential problem areas such as an increase in workplace stress.