Coronavirus: IIT-Ropar scholar, private engineers group, develop an app to prevent community transmission

PATIALA: As the country seems to be on the verge of commencement of stage 3 of coronavirus, an IIT-Ropar scholar and some engineers of Lagom Innovation Pvt. Ltd., of different streams have developed an android application that may prove helpful in curbing the community transmission of the virus.

The scholars claimed that this app will alert the users about the suspected or coronavirus confirmed person around them. An alarm will be raised in the mobile notifying the suspected or confirmed person around the user however it is only possible if the person registered as suspect or confirmed patient by the health authorities also have app downloaded in his/her smartphone.

They revealed that the app can identify the suspect with in a distance from 1 to 3 meters. The app also maintains a record of the persons coming in contact with each other for 14 days and this will make easy to trace out the persons who had come in contact with the COVID-19 suspect. The application can assess the proximity between the suspect/patient and user on the basis of Bluetooth in mobile. Once downloaded, the user gets a unique ID. If the user turns a suspect or test positive with the virus, the other app users who have come into the contact of suspected patient will be notified but the name or identity of the suspect will not be disclosed.

“The doctors or the administrative officials can update the ID of a suspect and the app will further notify all others who had come into the contact of suspect within 14 days period and hence the contacts can also visit the doctor or quarantine themselves. The transmission can be prevented”, said, Ankita Dey, IIT Ropar research scholar who hails from West Bengal.

She added, “As we are working from home we have shared this idea with some legislators who extended their support to get this implemented through state government who are helping in spreading the app. We have received government approval for the trial in our state West Bengal. We have been reaching out to doctors and healthcare workers for the same. Moreover, we have an advantage over the recent application KAVACH as we are using Bluetooth which is better for proximity sensing. I request everyone to spread this application so that we curb the communal spread in India.”

The application named as ‘MANU’ has been developed by Lagom Innovation Pvt. Ltd. engineers including Animesh Anand, Vaibhav Raj Singh, Sanket Kumar, Lakshay Raj, Vaibhav Anand, Shuvam Roy and IIT Ropar research scholar Ankita Dey. They started working on the project only a week ago.

How it works?

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A unique numerical ID is generated after the app is downloaded in the smartphone of the user. An alarm will be raised on user’s phone when the coronavirus suspect or patient is around them within a distance of 2 or 3 meters. In case, the medical reports of the suspect has turned negative the history of his/her ID will be deleted after 14 days. The app works when the phones have this app installed and running by using Bluetooth to measure distance between phones.

Link for MANU app: ( https://rebrand.ly/manuapk )