New Delhi: From "Go Corona Go" to "Sampark-o-Meter", the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and four Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have developed several mobile applications to aid the fight against coronavirus in the country.
The app "Go Corona Go" has been developed by a team at IISc which can help identify people who may have crossed paths with COVID-19 suspects.
"The app will help identify people who may have crossed paths with COVID-19 positive individuals or suspects by tracking their interactions in the past using bluetooth and GPS. It uses temporal network analytics in the back end to understand the risk propensity even for distant contacts, understand disease spread and identify high-risk people who are likely to contract and spread the virus," Tarun Rambha, a faculty member at IISc, told reporters.
"It also provides alerts on isolation and proximity scores, and helps enhance social distancing. It also has a geo-fencing feature for those who are under quarantine, and has the ability to provide their symptoms which is used in the risk evaluation," Rambha added.
A B.Tech student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has developed a mobile-based app called "Sampark-o-Meter" which can indicate areas on maps with maximum coronavirus infection possibility.
"The app generates a 'risk score' after considering various factors and can alert people to take precautionary measures including self-isolate or consulting a doctor. The app would facilitate users to estimate corona sampark risk rating.
"The existing approaches put the onus of responsibility of contact tracing and alerting or isolating the potential suspects on the government only, and are subjected to delays because of which, in most cases, the suspect has further spread the virus to many before being caught. This app, if implemented successfully, can timely alert and more efficiently control the spread," the developer student Sahil Verma said.
Similarly, a team of students and alumni at IIT Bombay, have made a mobile app named "CORONTINE" that will help in tracking the potential or suspected asymptomatic carriers (AC) of coronavirus if they leave their quarantine zone.
"The app is meant to be installed on the mobile of asymptomatic carriers (AC) by an authorized agency (AA). The app will send GPS coordinates of the mobiles periodically to a server under the supervision of AA. If a user leaves a specified quarantined zone marked by a geo-fence, it will be auto-detected. The purpose of the app is to help authorities track the asymptomatic carriers and prevent the spread of the disease," a team member said.