Intertwining COVID-19 & Software Development
With the rise of computer science in the world around us, the field of software development is seeming to have more of an impact on the medical field and COVID-19 than we originally thought. Data scientists and software developers from all around the world have developed a variety of tools ranging from a pre-diagnosis through cell phones based on breathing patterns to education products to assist students to study for their respective topics through automatic question generation. The world of computer science seems to have the answers to several of the problems presented by COVID-19 so what can we be expecting next?
Recently a team of software developers developed a COVID-19 diagnosing method that relied on machine learning techniques and required only CT Scans or X-rays and were able to get a 95% accuracy! This team has now formed an organization known as FightCOVID19 and is on the verge of developing several applications in order to increase the awareness of COVID-19 diagnosis via computational methods. They are developing a variety of applications including an android app, ios app, web application, and so much more. They are one software development team to look out for.
In March, software enthusiasts took part in a hackathon hosted by DevPost and ended up developing WeTrace, an application made to help people practice social distancing. WeTrace is able to detect the location of other people in a certain vicinity and then is able to warn the application user if there is a person nearby. From this, the user is able to take action accordingly to maintain social distancing protocols. Additionally, the user will get statistics on the number of people they have been nearby. They are also able to change their status to positive and notify users who they were close to that they were tested to be positive. Innovations such as these applications are the types of innovations that have helped slow down the spread of COVID-19.
We have seen innovative machine learning and mobile applications, yet there is more. A new product known as Covid19Dashboards has recently come to the forefront of data analysis for COVID-19. This web application has dashboards that have agglomerated mass amounts of data through algorithmic approaches and have also interpreted this data to be useful for statisticians, politicians, medical professionals, and more. Because of this ground-breaking conglomeration of data, professionals around the world have been able to make use of these dashboards in order to interpolate future cases and state of individual countries as well as the world. Just like how computer science can unite developers, this product has united the world to solve the COVID-19 Crisis one step at a time.
With most of these projects having been made within the past month or two, software developers around the world have only started to delve into the possibilities. With this crisis showing no sign of ending soon, the world can at least be optimistic enough to look forward to what developers put out there in an effort to slow the virus and bring positive change to this world.
