A team of young professionals headed by Kovai Sathyan have come up with a technology driven solution to fight corona. The app is currently under beta testing and is expected to be rolled in the next few days.
A team of professionals from Tamil Nadu have developed an app that allows home quarantined corona cases to stay in touch with doctors.
The team headed by AIADMK Spokesperson Mr. Kovai Sathyan and comprising of IT professionals who were earlier part of companies TCS, Cognizant and a few others have been working day and night for the past 8 days to come up with a technology driven solution to address the corona virus crisis in the state.
Mr. Sathyan who was also the former State Joint Secretary of the IT wing of the party mentioned that the app lets the home quarantined corona suspects to fix an appointment for a video call with a nearby doctor. Based on an ‘appointment-based framework’, the app enables a video call button 15 minutes prior to the appointment. There is a chat box that lets the patient to chat with the doctor. The app also has a SOS button that sends an immediate alert to the control centre in the district. Doctors can also prescribe medicines which will be delivered to the nearest pharmacy.
There is a control centre based in Chennai and control centres at all districts of Tamil Nadu has been set up to handle the efforts.
As of 21st March, there are 8950 persons under home quarantine for 28 days and are being monitored by the state government. Details of those under home quarantine have been fed to the app.Those who are kept under home quarantine cannot come outside due to the risk of community spread. It is also a risk for doctors to see them in person at their homes.
When asked why develop an app when there are already platforms that support video calling, Mr. Sathyan says that there are practical difficulties with using existing platforms like Whatsapp or Facebook as it requires maintaining a list of phone numbers and saving the number of the patient/doctor. He said that people in Jammu&Kashmir and Ladakh tried using Whatsapp video calling to contact doctors and encountered this problem. He also adds that tracking their data and analysing it also becomes difficult as such calls go unreported.
The app is currently under beta testing and is expected to be rolled out soon in the next few days. Mission Director K Senthil Raj has been coordinating the efforts between the team and the state government. Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar later in the day, examined the app in the presence of media.
Realizing that those under home quarantine also face psychological stress, Mr. Sathyan said that efforts are on to bring psychological counsellors on board as well.
Mr. Sathyan says that as soon as WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Health Minister C. Vijayabhaskar started looking for solutions that will contain the spread of the virus in the state. “Tamil Nadu government has been proactive and is working on a war-footing to fight corona”, he says. Mr. Sathyan urged people to stay indoors for the coming days, not panic, and help the government in its efforts to contain the spread.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 16 urged people to share technology-driven solutions to mygov.in to combat corona virus in the country. The government has started the COVID-19 ‘Solution Challenge’ on the mygov.in platform, where individuals and companies can share their ideas for strengthening the fight against coronavirus, Winners stand a chance to win Rs 1 lakh.
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention!