The new CoVis app tells you how high your Corona risk is at your location
With the CoVis app, the winners of the Covid-19 Challenge of the US-American MIT present a tool that can inform you at your respective location about your risk of coming into contact with the novel coronavirus there.
The Covid-19 Challenge was an ideas competition organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Over one weekend, teams of scientists worked on new methods of countering the corona pandemic with digital tools. The inventors received the CoVis app the assignment to actually implement the intended idea. Public funds were used for financing.
German researchers are also involved in the team from all over the world, namely in the form of the German Electron Synchrotron DESY. The DESY team has now explained the functional principle of the app in a recently published press release.
This is how the cloud and app work together to determine risk. (Screenshot: t3n / Covishealth.de)
Machine learning is then used to combine corona data from public sources – such as those from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) – with the latest studies and other medical information. The aim is to identify anomalies in the spread of the virus and thus make them predictable.
The resulting knowledge potential is then broken down to the specific situation of the individual in combination with personal information such as age, previous illnesses and travel habits and the whereabouts of the app user. For example, the app shows how your own risk of infection is up-to-date at a given location and what can be done to minimize the risk. The core functions include a 7-day forecast of the 7-day reporting rate for the user’s location.
“Unlike other apps, CoVis does not use any contact tracking for this. Personal data remain on the respective device, data and privacy protection are guaranteed one hundred percent, ”promise the developers.
This is what the CoVis app looks like. (Screenshots: t3n / Play-Store)
Institutions should also benefit from CoVis
The operators direct their app not only to individuals, but also to communities, companies, schools or hospitals. Health authorities and other public institutions could use the data to adjust safety precautions and health guidelines, it said.
CoVis is both for Android how for iOS available. The app currently requires its users to know the English language. A translation into German should already be in progress.
