Description
: To date, Covid-19 has predominantly spread in high income countries with relatively strong healthcare systems. However, lower middle-income countries like Bangladesh which has one of the highest population densities in the world, face greater risks. The recent surge in confirmed cases in Bangladesh poses serious concerns. Between March 8 when the first patient was identified up to the end of March, there were a total of 49 confirmed cases and 5 deaths. However, as of April 19th, 2020, the number of confirmed cases stood at 2456 with a death toll of 91, implying a more than 200% increase in infections over a period of 7 days. Although the ongoing response is largely focused on expatriate workers and other returnees from abroad, 80% of infected patients are not returnees. This underlines the need to enhance focus on local communities which face greater threats, and the densely-populated slums in Dhaka with shared water and sanitation facilities remain highly vulnerable.
One of the major drawbacks in the current crisis is that infected individuals remain unaware of their condition and remain in close proximity to family members and others in their communities. This not only endangers their family members but also increases the risk of further spread beyond their communities. High-risk and infected individuals may be discouraged by the logistical costs associated with proper testing. The potential economic consequences of isolation may also discourage infected individuals from seeking appropriate medical help. The lack of accurate self-diagnosis and further action thus prevents relevant authorities from isolating high-risk and infected individuals to limit the spread.
Nationally these digital services are currently available to Bangladeshi Citizens
• 14 telemedicine services
• 5 mobile application for Police, Army and DGHS
• 6 chatbots and 13 web portals for knowledge management.
None of them are focused on or currently have a proper mechanism to cater the marginalized slum dwellers
1. Purpose
The main purpose of this platform is to create a bridge between underserved communities, medical & testing facilities and assist law enforcement agencies to better coordinate as well as prevent the virus from spreading . This proposed platform is a community driven patient tracking and knowledge management platform which will help to keep people safe from infected and quarantined community members. This platform would also assist to bolster government support services and constant fight against the corona virus. We will initially focus on slum dwellers for adopting, taking preventive measures to quarantine any possible victims well ahead to save rest of the slum dwellers at an early stage to minimize the risk of spreading. The highlight of the app would be that it will give a real-time location of coronavirus infected people. The app also will also hold updated information about real-time cases, information, death cases and cured cases. Users will also be able to self/volunteer assisted diagnose coronavirus symptoms and seek assistance from government enlisted facilities.
2. Core Features
The core features of this application would be
1. Self-Assessment of Corona Virus: This self-assessment toolkit would help people to identify how likely s/he can get affected by the Corona virus 19.
2. Quarantined/Isolated Patient’s periodic health can be tracked. (option to talk to health professionals directly via call or video call and seek assistance from home without going to a health facility)
3. Bolstering Government Support Services: Ensuring Government declared quarantined people stay at home by doing geo-fencing on 50meter radius using their smartphone. If they come outside of their house, a notification will be sent to the nearby law enforcement agencies. This can reduce the chance of community level spreading of the virus especially in the densely populated low-income communities.
4. Artificial Intelligence based Chatbot
5. Knowledge content on Covid19
6. How to make low cost Wash facilities. Do it yourself (DIY) contents on
7. Daily supply / Aid request from government via 333 hotline for marginalized or low income households who are having difficulty earning due to covid19
The app has the following features:
o Cross platform operability
o Fast and reliable
o Multi-lingual: Bengali and English
The application will be a Cross-platform Progressive Web Application, Voice Broadcast Dashboard will also be embedded into that dashboard.
Mode of Delivery:
i) For budget Phone users in low income settlement:
a. Periodic Interactive voice response (IVR) based Self-assessment survey (once daily)
b. SMS based Self Covid19 Assessment data collection
c. Volunteer based Community Covid19 Assessment data collection.
d. Rapid transmission of critical information and advisory dissemination to the last mile users via call broadcast (40 sec-1minute clips)
e. Online doctors can call quarantined patients and monitor their health conditions periodically.
ii) For Smartphone users:
• Self-assessment Toolkit mobile app/web platform user interface
• Periodic health tracker using application user interface.
• Ward, District wise real time tracking of vulnerable areas.
• Ensuring Government declared quarantined people stay at home by doing geo-fencing of 50meter radius using their smartphone. If they come outside of their house, a notification will be sent to the nearby law enforcement agencies.
• Access to knowledge contents.
iii) For decision makers:
There will be a dashboard where all the self-assessment data will be populated along with their geolocation. Based on the respondent’s answers and level of risk a district level/ward level heatmap will be generated, which will assist the government agencies to gather information like in which are people are thinking that they might be affected to covid19 or having flu or showing other symptoms. For highly likely cases, decision makers can assign a doctor who can call using this platform to confirm the cases. If there is any severe cases reported and after verifying if the agencies declare that patient to be quarantined their periodic health and geolocation can be monitored to ensure that this person does not go out and pose a threat to the community.
