Covid Connect

The COVID Connect team covers 3 continents
Application flow chart
COVID Connect Landing Page on mobile and tablet
Activity Maps
Health Status

Inspiration

Team Medihack spans 4 time zones, 3 continents, and multiple business functions. Like so many, we have each felt the impact of COVID-19. Working in the clinical research field, our motivation to help stems from the recognition that science needs reliable data and there simply is not enough of it yet. The need to surface the most up to date, vetted, fact-based information to those on the front line has never been greater. The ability to see how the virus is spreading, how the disease is manifested, and exactly identify the symptoms is critical to success.

What it does

This app allows the systematic collection, aggregation, and dissemination of data - enabling communities to prevent the spread and ultimately defeat this disease with minimal levels of morbidity and mortality. Designed to capture unique perspectives from individuals, clinicians, and investigators, the resulting data will empower individuals, educate clinicians and engage investigators to collectively respond to this crisis.

By crowdsourcing the data, we can provide a detailed analysis of the current pandemic trends, symptoms, and COVID-19 test results (both positive and negative) at the community level over a time period specified by the user. This data can then be combined with that of professional caregivers to provide a more holistic picture of real time disease epidemiology. Furthermore, investigators can identify potential research candidates in their geographic location who conform to their studies’ eligibility criteria.

To be successful, all sections of society must come together to share information, experiences, and data. Modern technology can facilitate this process and provide real time insights into how the disease is spreading amongst the population and in geographical regions. People need timely data, clinicians need population data, and investigators need aggregated data to ensure communities are best prepared to combat this disease with their own unique contributions.

How we built it

We are accustomed to agile development practices, and hackathons offer an opportunity to post, review, revise, and update the product quickly. Using tools that enable rapid development in a secure platform, we used our our own github library to post our code and share it across the team.

Challenges we ran into

Everyone on the team worked from home due to the pandemic. Most of us had never worked together, so we had to quickly form a team and move forward with development. We had a few bumps with Slack since we use it for other things, and sometimes got a little mixed up with which channel was where, but quickly adapted and made it work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This application, with our unique approach, will give communities confidence in their approach to tackling the disease whilst equipping caregivers, clinicians and investigators the data they need to provide the very best standard of care and research resources required to defeat this global pandemic.

What we learned

We learned about how to work as a virtual, remote team. We learned a lot about COVID19 and how much data is available. We felt good about using our skills to contribute in a way that we believe can be meaningful.

What's next for Covid Connect

Starting from scratch for the hackathon means we had to leave a few features and capabilities on the table. With encouragement from each other and the results of this event, we hope to continue working on it for the mission we have - to power smarter treatments and healthier people.