A new platform lets employers estimate how many workers will contract or die from COVID-19, along with their overall medical costs. Here's how it works.

• The coronavirus is causing widespread uncertainty across corporate America, making it difficult for companies to plan for the long term. Aon is trying to change that.
• On Friday, the professional services giant introduced a new platform that allows firms to use de-identified employer healthcare data and other sources of information to measure the impact of the pandemic on their operations.
• Organizations can pick a future date and generate estimates on how many employees may contract the illness, have to go to the emergency room, or even die from it - along with the overall healthcare costs to the enterprise.
• Follow all of Business Insider's latest updates on the coronavirus here.
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Companies are grappling with significant uncertainty as the coronavirus pandemic continues to upend life across the globe.

Estimates vary over how long the new social distancing guidelines will need to remain in place. There's also ambiguity over how rapidly and where the disease will spread, and there's uncertainty surrounding the number of employees that might test positive for the virus.

All of that makes it exceedingly difficult for executives to map out the next month - let alone a strategy for the next year.

One professional services firm is trying to change that.

On Friday, Aon launched a new platform that uses de-identified data from health care plans - combined with other information sources from institutions like the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention - to help corporations estimate the overall impact of the pandemic on their workforce.

Companies are "trying to figure out when to send people back to work and at what locations," Global Chief Actuary Tim Nimmer told Business Insider. "If you can see in the data when the peak is, that helps them with their workforce planning."

Each uniquely created dashboard on the platform lets employers pick a specific date in the future and obtain critical estimates on, among other things, how many employees are likely to contract the coronavirus, the number of critical cases or potential fatalities, and the expected medical claims costs.

Data is refreshed daily based on the latest estimates on the number of cases across the US and incorporates factors like new social distancing guidelines and other ongoing mitigation efforts.

A 'herculean effort,' and a platform built without profit in mind

It took Aon two weeks to build the system, reflecting the strong demand in the marketplace for such a product. Nimmer said it was a worldwide "herculean effort" to launch the platform so quickly.

"There was nothing that was more important for our clients than understanding the impact of coronavirus on the workforce and the cost associated with it," he said. "We dropped everything else. Took data scientists, actuaries, underwriters from across the globe to focus on this."

At launch, Aon will have two million individuals reflected on its platform. And while it isn't free, the company is not expecting to make a profit off of it.

Alongside the impact to operations, the platform can also help employers take steps to protect the most at-risk employees. Aon is also working to incorporate new features, like measures to determine lost productivity or healthcare savings as a result of employees pushing off elective medical procedures.

It will be immediately available to companies in the US that have more than 300 employees (the recommended threshold), but Aon plans to eventually expand it globally.

"We are putting clients on it very quickly," said Nimmer.

And get the latest coronavirus analysis and research from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.

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