Microsoft powers Gaia in fight against Covid-19
“Our Agra smart city programme management team is working on the frontline alongside the Agra district administration to organise response measures, create food and supplies distribution linkages, enable digital medical centres and citizen helplines, and spread necessary information to citizens” AMRITA CHOWDHURY, Director, Gaia
Microsoft is providing support to Gaia Smart Cities, an Internet of Things (IOT) start-up, to help citizens assess their coronavirus-related health risk.
Gaia has built a platform, using Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure, that enables citizens to provide information about their health risk and help city administration track responses by pincodes. The platform includes an app.
The data that the citizens feed about their symptoms, travel and contact history is stored in Azure, which then provides a real-time report about the daily situation as well as trends observed in the city.
The Mumbai-based firm’s technology has been successfully tested in Agra, and Gaia plans to take the platform to other cities.
Arun Prakash, CEO of Agra Smart City, said this app will help cities identify high-risk individuals, get health teams to them with their permission, and through data analytics, see emerging location-based spread trends, if any, to be able to take prompt response action.
“The Agra smart city control and command room has been converted into a war room in our fight against coronavirus in Agra district. This app helps citizens understand the critical symptoms and their risk factor, so that they can take preventive care or connect with medical practitioners as needed,” said Prakash.
Amrita Chowdhury, Director at Gaia, said the company repurposed its smart feedback software platform to build a “citizen home delivery locator platform, citizen covid-19 risk self-assessment app”, and other digital enablers.
She said these software-as-aservice (Saas) solutions, powered by Azure, are scalable, transportable, and rapidly deployable. These solutions leverage pincode-based data so that targeted micro-location specific information can be collated or disseminated to best benefit citizens.
“As a start-up, we are humbled to be able to contribute to the fight against coronavirus. Our Agra smart city programme management team is working on the frontline alongside the Agra district administration to organise response measures, create food and supplies distribution linkages, enable digital medical centres and citizen helplines, and spread necessary information to citizens,” said Chowdhury. “It would be our privilege to extend this contribution to support other cities as well.”
Sangeeta Bavi, Director – Startups, Microsoft India, said: “Our trusted and scalable cloud platform and technologies present a transformative opportunity for start-ups to innovate and build ground-breaking solutions that are helping the citizens of our country,” said Bavi.