Revue internationale de santé et de sécurité publiques

Health Risks of Business Travel: Innovation towards Travel Health Risk Management

Abstract

Ahmad Latif,  Khaled El-khatib

The aim of this paper is to review the literature describing the travel risk assessment and to introduce a new online tool, the Travel Risk Estimator for Business Traveller, (TREB). Travel risk assessment is an important part of the travel health practice; it includes evaluating both the risks of destination and health of the individual travelling to that destination. Risk assessment mainly determines what health and safety advice and interventions are given within the relevant prevailing travel health guidelines. The linkage between global travel and business is becoming stronger and travel related disease awareness has increased. With increased international interest in traveller' health, there is a demand to simplify and facilitate the travel health risk assessment. The authors have developed a prototype of an online tool, the TREB calculator. It is envisioned as a tool, which allows both traveller and health care professional to have a rough estimation of the risk of a trip in a simple way. TREB is a new tool first introduced in the fourth quarter of 2013 by the Qatar Petroleum Occupational Health Services in during a presentation done by the authors in the Second QP Occupational Health conference in November 2013. TREB could be a helpful and easy to use tool for both individual traveller and clinicians to quantify travel risk. It provides rough estimation of risk and advice to traveller, nevertheless validity testing and review is required.