Covidmaps.org

Korean Tracking app America needs to adopt - NOW. Patient GPS tracking with an ethical approach

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Inspiration

COVID19 Tracking and Transparency systems put in place in Asian countries that have been part of a wide-ranging strategy to stem the outbreak. See https://coronamap.site

What it does

  1. Users can type in their location to view locations where confirmed COVID19 virus cases had visited prior to quarantine
  2. Patients can anonymously self-report their location history using an easy to use form in less than 5 minutes

How I built it

React, Firebase, and Google Maps API For the UI of the map, a custom marker is needed to highlight the risk of being in a particular infected zone. Using Location History with the help of Google Maps, Firebase, users location were logged on a map. Custom coloured markers were needed to highlight the risk level and time elapsed since visit to risk zone. Custom markers assets were created using Figma and wrote a script to filter the timestamp data and load the respective markers.

Challenges I ran into

  1. Growth - How to grow adoption of this site to achieve critical mass
  2. Verification - How to weed out bad actors from spamming the site
  3. Reach out to help several project owners and and resolve some of the pressing issues.
  4. Learning - Learned GraphQL, Gatsby, React Native in several days.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting people excited about this project and informing people about what other countries are doing.

What I learned

  1. That it is possible for a grass-roots movement to have an impact on society at large.
  2. Working on a different time zone, with different team members

What's next for Covidmaps.org

  • Finishing MVP
  • Working with government and public health officials on the verification problem
  • Working on a viral promotion strategy to raise awareness of the site
  • Adding filtering feature whereby user able to filter through their marker based on risk level
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