InStock

Essentials Locator for the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Presentation

https://slides.com/eladnava/instock/fullscreen

Inspiration

There I was, staring at yet another empty shelf in yet another pharmacy, as I was attempting to buy a digital thermometer and some fever reducing medicine for my family. Being told time and time again by store reps that these essential items are currently out of stock and I should look elsewhere.

Essentials stock shortages have unfortunately become a reality for most of us during the COVID-19 / Coronavirus pandemic. Emergency essentials we desperately need have gone out-of-stock in many stores due to panic buying, hoarding, and the sudden surge in demand.

Yet, there are still stores stocking these essentials in our cities. But visiting every single pharmacy & supermarket in a city in-person to check if an item is in stock is a tedious, if not impossible task that may contribute to further contagion of Coronavirus.

What it does

Visitors to InStock (www.instock.app) are presented with a map of pharmacies and supermarkets that have recently confirmed essentials in stock in their city.

Stores that stock essentials are highlighted in green, where stores without any items are greyed out.

Clicking the stores reveals exactly which items are in/out of stock, as well as when the stock status was last updated, and directions to get to this store.

How InStock confirms stock

I built an A.I. assistant bot (think Google Duplex) that calls up pharmacies & supermarkets in a given city, asking store reps to confirm stock of essentials, such as:

  1. Pain relief / fever reducing medicine
  2. Cough medicine
  3. Digital thermometers
  4. Hand sanitizer
  5. Antibacterial soap
  6. Bottled water
  7. Canned food
  8. Pasta/rice

Listen to 1 of 1,000 real calls the AI assistant made in London to confirm stock: https://go.aws/2JqVDLB

Government use

InStock can provide municipalities insight into up-to-date store stock status of all stores in their city to better manage and understand critical supply chains during the crisis.

Municipalities can leverage the AI assistant to call all the pharmacies & supermarkets in a given city simultaneously, and obtain up-to-date stock shortage status in less than 30 minutes.

Local governments and municipalities can officially endorse InStock and formally request cooperation with the AI bot's stock checks during the pandemic.

Challenges I ran into

Some store representatives did not want to provide the stock status when they figured out it was a bot on the other side.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

200 out of 500 store reps in London cooperated and provided up-to-date stock status of essentials which is a 40% success rate! :)

What I learned

How to build an AI bot that can collect information over the phone.

Technical tools used

InStock was built using React.js, Node.js, and MongoDB, and Twilio for outgoing calls. Hosted on AWS.

What's next for InStock

Global expansion.

InStock is currently live in London, and the next step is to expand to more cities with essential shortages, and make the public aware of this nonprofit initiative.

Expanding to more cities will require calling up thousands of pharmacies and supermarkets on a daily basis and this incurs large costs which only grow with the number of cities supported. Therefore, the main resource needed is funding to pay for the outgoing calls.

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