In collaboration with the University of Virginia
The rapid spread of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, as well as its threatening appearance in Europe and America, mobilized researchers at the University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the USA, who organized a hacking marathon, with the aim of creating applications that will stop the spread of the virus.
This initiative, in contrast to the relaxed atmosphere that usually prevails at hackathons, brought together 80 developers, whose goal was to create easy-to-use online and mobile applications that would help the residents of Liberia, S. Leone, and Guinea respond to emergency situations.
For this reason, the professors behind the hackathon gave the developers access to highly sophisticated synthetic datasets provided by the US Department of Defense, which helped them virtually represent these three countries, where the spread of Ebola is “striking red.”.
One of the smartphone applications created helps patients with suspected Ebola-related symptoms to immediately report it to an official government health agency, which will send a free ambulance to transport the patient to the hospital to determine if they are a carrier and provide treatment. So far, all the ideas for the apps are concentrated on this page, while according to the lead professor of the research, in 2 to 3 weeks there will be official releases of those applications that advance to the next stage of development.
Source: lifo.gr
