Listed here are a few active enthusiastic techies or organizations working relentlessly in times of this crisis to help save lives. This list, though not exhaustive, highlights the major contributors who are collating and posting verified leads on social media, during the toughest times that India is made to face today, in saving lives and in overcoming the pandemic.
The second wave of the pandemic has hit India really hard making its health system collapse amid a tsunami of COVID-19 cases. Most severely affected States and UTs, especially the national capital Delhi, is grappling for medical supplies as the magnitude of Sars-CoV-2 infection rate was beyond prediction to be this high. Daily rates are currently over 300,000, which is considered as the world’s highest-ever daily infection rate.
The lethal second wave has compelled a growing demand for ventilator-supported beds, oxygen cylinders, plasma donors, and drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab. The acute imbalance in oxygen demand versus its supply has consumed several lives of people across India.
The condition in India stares at an alarming rate of mortality, especially due to lack of oxygen and nonavailability of hospital care. From the past week, citizens were found scrambling and were put through extreme hardship in finding hospitals with ICU beds and with continuous oxygen supply. This week too the situation remains the same as hospitals run out of oxygen and other treatment essentials and people are left seeking admissions into ICUs that have vacant beds.
As a big blessing to many, social media applications have come to rescue many thousands and few active participants are doing a lot good here at this time of crisis. Several young developers have come together to build dashboards, apps, and websites that give verified and credible leads to finding hospital beds and other resources.
Digital enthusiasts across the country have risen up to the situation in sourcing and centralizing information in providing verified leads on social media apps like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Listed here are a few active enthusiastic techies or organizations working relentlessly in times of crisis to help save lives. This list, though not exhaustive, highlights the major contributors who are on the ground to ease and help during the toughest times that India is made to face today, owing to the pandemic.
1. Sprinklr
Members of the Sprinklr family have created a dynamic resources dashboard for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis in India. The data shows open beds, oxygen, and more, organized by location and updated in real-time. Information-based tweets regarding the availability of oxygen, beds, etc. in each city is highlighted. The information is divided, sorted, and organized into four sections i.e., Injections, Oxygen Cylinders, Hospital Beds, and Plasma. All the resources listed on Twitter are sourced and neatly cataloged through Sprinklr’s AI system.
The idea is to organize all the chaos from multiple sources into one structured data set. The USP of this dashboard is that it has all the information and leads for oxygen, medicine, beds, and others sorted and grouped by need, city, state, and the whole country.
- 2. CovidFYI – Covid-resource aggregator/Lifesources.in
CovidFYI is spearheaded by Simran Soni. CovidFYI is a verified crowd sourced emergency services directory. The listings include unifying information on oxygen supported beds, medicine, hospitals, ambulance and helplines. The information is curated by Covid FYI, supported by Swasth Alliance and Vercel, and is powered by CoronaSafe Network.
The platform is a one-stop emergency services information desk to access verified Covid related help. Information on labs, hospitals, government contacts, doctors to tele-consult, and helplines are updated in real-time.
CovidFYI has also integrated with StepOne, which is a collective of creative volunteers, doctors, and technology startups who came together under the umbrella of ‘Startup Vs COVID’ and have joined forces to augment healthcare delivery infrastructure.
Also, CovidFYI has also combined its strengths with ACT GRANTS, which is a movement by India’s startup ecosystem, enabling changemakers to give time, talent & resources to mobilize solutions that address societal problems at scale. ACT started as a 100 CR grant in response to fight Covid-19 and has now expanded its mandate to cover education, environment, health and women’s participation in the workforce.
Simran leads the efforts at https://liferesources.in. If you are a provider of any Covid relief resource – oxygen, hospital, medicine, pharmacy, food, stay, quarantine, delivery, counseling, doctor consultation, plasma bank, support group etc. you could fill in your details at liferesources.in/data so that the team can list your services on their platform.
- 3. Swasth Alliance – Mission Oxygen – https://life.coronasafe.network/
Swasth, an app more than the telemedicine app, has started crowdfunding campaigns across such as Milaap, Ketto and Impact Guru to help hospitals across the country get immediate access to oxygen concentrators.
Swasth is now providing a COVID-19 RESOURCES DIRECTORY, which is a crowd-sourced, verified and updated directory of medical services across India. Patients and care-seekers can use the directory to find hospital beds, homecare, medicines, ambulances and more.
Also, the Citizen’s groups and civil society organizations providing Covid Relief have formed a ‘Covid Relief India Alliance’. The goal is to consolidate our efforts and provide relief to the remotest region of India with equal rigors. The group has 15+ projects collaborating already.
If you know a citizen or an organization running Covid Relief Projects, ask them to join forces! Fill up this form and one of their volunteers will reach out to you soon! https://forms.gle/mipGNhsuVFXWiTGG6
- 4. CoronaSafe Network – https://coronasafe.network/
CoronaSafe Network is an open-source public utility designed by a multi-disciplinary team of innovators and volunteers who are working on a model to support government efforts with full understanding and support of Government of Kerala.
Available in 7 Languages, this open-source disaster management platform is designed by a team of 200+ engineers and 50+ of India’s leading professionals to tackle the current pandemic and future disasters.
- 5. IndiaCOVIDSOS – @IndiaCOVIDSOS
This is a volunteer group of scientists, clinicians, engineers, policy-makers, and epidemiologists from the global community engaged in fighting against COVID in India. The group at indiacovidsos.org has created infographics for home-care during covid. Information is vetted by doctors and is available in many regional languages.
- 6. Sanketh | covidwall.wishboard.co – @SankethYS
Sanketh calls himself the “good news guy,”. His writings are on http://goodnewsco.club @wishboardco
And he is the most active on Twitter, relentlessly providing all resources to fight COVID-19 mostly through Twitter feeds.
Covid Resources Wall acts as the master of all guides and resources – to avoid duplication and chaos Sanketh and his team has collated all the available resources into one. One can find all the apps, tools, verified state- and city-wise lists that you can use to get immediate help, especially for the COVID-19 warriors and volunteers to search faster. The Wall also mentions all the organizations one can donate to and support fellow people affected by COVID.
Ayush Pathak (@ayshptk) backs Sanketh with technical support. https://twitter.com/ayshptk?s=11
Sanketh’s efforts are accelerated by:
- Creators Of Products @CreatorsOfProd
A community of PMs, Engineers, Designers, Startup Founders & Business folks who are learning, sharing and discussing Product Creation
- The Product Folks @TheProductfolks
A volunteer-driven community of Product enthusiasts
- Dunzo @DunzoIt
The delivery app that works 24/7.
- covidresources.in @COVResourcesIn
A real time updated & verified repository of COVID related resources for India, run by selfless volunteers spearheaded by Atharva Kharbade.
Link: http://covidwall.wishboard.co
- 7. Osborne Saldanha – Venture Capitalist – os@em.vc
Osborne on his LinkedIn handle made the following information available:
- Hemkunt Foundation is delivery oxygen to those in need: https://lnkd.in/giF-E6y
- If you’re outside India, Lizzie Chapman curated this list: https://lnkd.in/gv8FWpN
- Donate to procure oxygen concentrators for hospitals: https://lnkd.in/gv2qx5d by Abhishek Agarwal
- Prakhar Khanduja and Vivekananda Hallekere are collating a Google doc for donors to donate directly to families. DM them here or on Twitter https://lnkd.in/g-8quhR
- Here’s a massive Google Doc providing links to tons NGO’s and organizations that need donations: https://lnkd.in/gv7n-mK
8. CovRelief mobile app – https://covidrelief.glideapp.io/
Three engineering graduates from IIT Delhi have come out with this CovRelief mobile app which provides live tracking of vacant hospital beds across 15 cities in the country. It also shares information on oxygen availability, plasma, and video featuring renowned doctors. Also, this app is a not-for-profit initiative that tracks hospital beds and all Covid-19 related information—sourced from government websites. Milan Roy, Swapnil Sharma, and Pranit Ganvir are the three developers of this app, which has already witnessed 200,000 downloads.
All these social media accounts listed above have actively engaged themselves, mostly on Twitter, to either retweet the needs by individuals or have sourced the information on ICU bed and oxygen availability, which is the need of the hour. Their support has been invaluable to the front-line workforce too.
Although their contribution to easing the situation is great, the system limits itself to only a small percentage of the population that has access to the internet and smartphones.
A large population in India still relies on communication through basic feature phones and any leads on bed availability at Government hospitals sent through a voice call or SMS could have a larger potential to take the information to the needy in times of this crisis.
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