www.fasterthancorona.org

inspiration

On the website www.fasterthancorona.org, both healthy individuals as CoViD19-positive tested individuals can submit data. Data donors are encouraged to visit the site and give data on a daily basis. Registration and consecutive data donations require entering an email address. Beside zip code, no other personal data is obtained. The idea behind the solution is the voluntary data donation from a preferably large part of the broad population. A team of thinkers and makers in the area of digital health brought faster-than-corona to life in Switzerland and Germany: physicians (pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine) pharmacists, epidemiologists, coders and data scientists from Germany, Switzerland and Spain. Now the service expands to Spain, France, Denmark, Netherlands and UK. “We still know extremely little about the virus” says Dr. Tobias Gantner, MD, head of the project and CEO of HealthCareFuturists in Cologne. “At this phase, only limited scientific data about infected patients are released, mostly because the clinicians are too busy in the hospitals actually treating patients. The faster and the more we know about the disease, the better we can help patients. Every CoViD19-patient sitting at home in his living room is becoming a professional concerning this disease. It is this very knowledge that we want to share and analyze. By doing so, we can find answers to broadly discussed questions on medications like Ibuprofen, Resochin or antihypertensive drugs, how they interact with the virus.” The two-stage process starts by entering anonymized data using a simple questionnaire, which is used to allow comparison with other participants and enables creating risk profiles. The data sets are organized by greater areas defined by groups of zip codes, allowing comparison in and of specific regions. In the second step participants are asked for data donations. To achieve solid longitudinal data, registration by email address and zip code is necessary. “Faster than corona” wants to aid people in assessing their actual situation. At the same time, the developers hope to find insights about the virus and the journey of infection and the disease itself. “Data quality? Privacy? We are completely aware that we are pushing certain limits, but we are in the midst of a global crisis”, Gantner states. “What drives us, is gaining information about the virus. By using the data and performing meaningful analyses we actually want to save lifes. Therefore we need to spread faster than corona. We need every support we can get. Many people do want to get involved very practical. Our approach is aiming towards selfdetermination of an individual who voluntarily provides his data. Artificial intelligence is applied to generate and verify hypotheses.” Medical data from the participating data donors are passed only to institutions and experts with a fundamental public scientific interest, like for example the world health organization (WHO), the Robert-Koch-Institut (RKI), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (eCDC), universities and other citizen science groups that want to contribute in gaining knowledge. Furthermore, the data is thought to be provided in an anonymized format for hackathons, so that as many experts as possible can participate in the analysis of the data. The project faster than corona was initiated without commercial intent – without funding by government, industry, or other third-parties. The team of founders seeks to provide its knowhow in digital health for the general good so that the digital transformation and the seasonably approach of using data may contribute to a better quality of life, expanding lives, and saving lives.