The rapid spread of COVID-19 across the world is putting severe pressure on the global healthcare system. This has disrupted businesses and humankind globally. Thus, to curb the situation, healthcare stakeholders are actively exploring new ways. This is the reason, companies, be it large or small, associations, partners and other tech companies are stepping out together to lower the impact of the pandemic on public health. Tech companies, in particular, are playing a key role with a new level of responsibility and working aside health care professionals round the clock.
A global community of developers in the Codementor and Arc communities, for instance, is offering to assist with projects designed to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The project, Code Against COVID-19, is designed to connect organizations requiring development help for their projects directly with mentors and freelance developers. According to Arc, over 200 developer volunteers have signed up for the effort and are working on more than 20 different projects.
Additionally, a leader in distributed healthcare and clinical testing Color has created a high-throughput, CLIA-certified COVID-19 testing laboratory that is integrated with public health tools. Based in Burlingame, CA, the testing facility processes clinical samples to support public health efforts with a near-term goal of performing 10,000 tests every day. The company’s COVID-19 testing platform consists of an integrated software platform to manage risk screening, test ordering, results delivery, case management, contact tracing, and public health agency case reporting. The company’s testing facility offering support in three key areas, Distributed Testing for Front-Line Workers, Post-test Logistics, Case Management and Contact Tracing, and High-Capacity COVID-19 Testing Infrastructure.
In Turkey, leading industrial conglomerate company Koç Holding has announced the mass production of mechanical ventilators that will help respond to and treatment of COVID-19. The company’s subsidiary Arçelik, a leading consumer durables manufacturer in Europe, is undertaking the mass production ventilators to help the country avoid possible shortages. According to reports, Turkey is currently reported to have around 17,000 ventilators in its public hospitals. Working with the Turkish Ministry of Industry and Technology and the Turkish Ministry of Health, the company has designed and tested the first prototype of the ventilator. Arçelik intends is to produce 5,000 units by the end of May.
In India, where billions of people are currently living under the nationwide lockdown, a large number of US-based companies including Google, Uber and IBM are offering their resources in the country’s fight against the contagious virus. The companies resources ranging from free digital education platform, to face masks, and ventilator production to converting shipping containers into ICU. As the country continues dealing with avoiding the shortage of ventilators if COVID-19 cases rise exponentially, some startups and doctors are coming out with innovative ideas.
For instance, a professor of neurosurgery at AIIMS Dr. Deepak Agrawal and a robotics scientist Diwakar Vaish, who previously developed the world’s cheapest ventilator, ‘AgVa’, have improved upon capabilities of this ventilator by integrating a patent-pending negative ion generator that inactivates the virus. According to reports, the health ministry earlier even placed an order for 1,000 ventilators from AgVa Healthcare. Furthermore, Nocca Robotics, a company that makes waterless solar plant cleaning robots stepped out with an Ambu bag-based ventilator design. Leading companies like Dynamitic, Mahindra, and Tata, among others, are also re-engineering their production capacity to fulfill the ventilator needs in the country.