Apart from the medical professionals, other technical professionals continue working from their workplaces despite the threats the pandemic has imposed. This unlikely situation has, however, got various researchers working to combat the virus through the innovation of different technologies. One such innovation comes to us from the researchers at the University of Warwick (Coventry, UK) and Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (Kiev, Ukraine), together with the Click Medix LLC. This trio developed an app and a chatbot to efficiently monitor and mitigate the COVID-19 cases. This app is available for download on mobile phones and computers sans any charges. It can be used by anyone including patients and their caretakers or those in close contact with them. Additionally, it can assist doctors, nurses, community health workers, hospital and clinic staff, specialists, hospital IT staff, MHFA, and even insurance companies.  

The app has been successfully set up in South Africa and Saudi Arabia and is working efficiently since 20th March 2020. The same is now being deployed in the UK as well as in India. The app has been developed by Dr. Vishwesh Kulkari (Warwick University UK) and has been executed to communities by Dr. Neha Sharma (Aarogyam UK) and Dr, Rekha Chaudhari (Mothers Touch India), who is at the forefront in the development and outreach of this app to a wider audience in the UK. In India, Dr.Rekha Chaudhari, Global Wellness Ambassador (Mothers Touch) would be leading the awareness creating and working towards making the app available across the country.

Speaking on her involvement in this, Dr.Rekha Chaudhari, Global Wellness Ambassador (Mothers Touch) said ” It is truly an honour to be associated with such a noble cause. Today we are facing a very situation which has created panic across the world. Global medical teams have been overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of potential and genuine COVID 19 cases. This app is a scientific marvel and a need of the hour for medical teams, patients and the average individual. It a country like ours, it would certainly help everyone to be more aware and help our doctors make the necessary decisions regarding treatment for patients. Additionally, this one- stop-shop app is interlinked with clinics, testing labs and has tele-medicine capabilities. We foresee this app as greatly benefitting our fellow Indian citizens”

The app aims to reduce the burden on the healthcare service by eliminating needless hospital visits and unnecessary consultations with the doctors or caregivers. The app has features to provide referrals to clinics, test sites and home visits apart from telemedicine services suitable to manage the patients’ conditions based on location, charge and availability. Multi-channel messaging with the help of SMS, Whatsapp and Skype are available on the app. This helps a remotely situated doctor or nurse to correspond with the concerned person to offer healthcare services and e-prescriptions. Machine learning (ML) helps it to calculate how the COVID-19 symptoms and severity are spreading in individuals and communities, at various levels like the city, district, state or national level. The best part is, it enforces an efficient supply chain management by ensuring that the healthcare service centres are equipped with an adequate supply of necessary personnel, gears and consumables.

At the heart of this innovation are Dr. Vishwesh Kulkarni (Warwick) and Ting Shih (ClickMedix). The app’s effectiveness lies in the presence of the all-in-one mobile-powered disease management platform of ClickMedix LLC, compliant with HIPAA and GDPR. Primary, secondary and tertiary care facilities, home-visit community health workers, patients and their caregivers along with rural clinics are leveraging the advantages of this platform across 23 nations of the world. It is serving around 1 million patients with diseases like COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, TB and other chronic health issues that require continuous follow-ups.