In the past week, a team of 30 volunteers from different companies such as Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon collaborated to set up a website named "covidnearyou," with the main objective of tracking COVID-19 as it spreads.
This notion began when Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs head, Prem Ramaswami and his wife started to feel seek over a week ago.
When he attempted to get a test for COVID-19, his doctor said it would be impossible. Ramaswami added, he was not given access to the said test because he had not been in contact with anyone tested positive.
Ramaswami who formerly worked on various health undertakings at Google thought of how he could be of help to others who were on the same boat as he was.
And so, he contacted Boston Children's Hospital chief innovation officer and epidemiologist, John Brownstein and asked him to "volunteer his services." Brownstein is famous in the tech world for his collaboration with other companies such as Uber and Google on public health projects for quite some time now, which also includes the "Google Flu Project," which had the capacity to track the spread of flu.
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The Website That Can Monitor Influenza
When Ramaswami and Brownstein started to talk via a call, the latter informed the company head about a particular website, already in progress. This particular website is being developed to monitor influenza and it's called "flunearyou."
Following their conversation, the two decided to designate the underlying technology to better monitor COVID-19, given the present done in testing.
This resulted in the notion of creating "covidnearyou." Ramaswami realized though, that he could not do the project on his own and thus, he pulled together a group of acquaintances and friends from the tech world to support the project.
Employees from Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, CloudFare and MongoFlare, as well as the other tech firms agreed to develop "covidnearyou."
The public help experts, on the other hand, are the ones responsible for the content. Sharing he is more concentrated in civic-days these past few days at the Sidewalk Labs, Ramaswami said, he is a tech guy and "not a doctor."
He added that the team is here to assist the health experts "and take their direction." After one week of working, the group which comprises the designers, marketers, and engineers, is now all set to go live via covidnearyou.org. To date, this website is recruiting people coming from within the United States to share whether they are feeling the symptoms or not, and some demographic details.
Targeting to Reach 100,000 Users
The main objective of the "covidnearyou" website is to reach 100,000 users. Relatively, the group is hoping to fill in some gaps, as well, in reporting because of the "lack of testing." Brownstein explained that, if there is no widespread testing, there won't be a clear image of where COVID-19 is. He also admitted, at present, they are "basically flying blind."
Essentially, healthy people who participate are instructed to fill out important details about their age, zip code, gender and whether if they've already been administered with the flu vaccine. In addition, the site includes a map a swell, of the different states, and displays the exact and present areas where the outbreaks spread.
When upon filling out their information, people declare that they are feeling sick, they are then prompted to describe the symptoms like cough, fever, or shortness of breath, they are experiencing. Then, they are asked as well, if they have traveled recently and if they have been directly in touch with anyone tested positive for COVID-19.
In future duplication, the team is planning to include additional symptoms as medical experts come out with more information about the COVID-19 pandemic. And, as of this writing, according to Brownstein, approximately 10,000 people had already provided their health condition to "covidnearyou," and the majority of the respondents are found healthy.