App to support health care workers

THE WORLD Health Organization has launched an app to support health workers around the world in caring for patients infected by the novel coronavirus (Covid-19), as well as to protect themselves as they do this critical work.

The app enables workers to access the WHO’S rapidly expanding bank of educational material and guidance, along with offering opportunities to participate in virtual skills workshops and other live training.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has helped the WHO bring forward the deployment of the app, 12 months ahead of schedule, in response to Covid-19.

The WHO has a Covid-19 “situation dashboard”, or interactive map, which gives a daily update on the latest global, and by country, numbers of Covid-19 cases. WHO chief information officer Bernardo Mariano said the dashboard has been enhanced with the generous support of tech companies.

“Thanks to support from tech companies, WHO was able to enhance the Covid-19 situation dashboard,” said WHO chief information officer, Bernardo Mariano.

AWS is providing automatic web content extraction, expertise in data analytics and processing, and open object storage that enables the retention of large amounts of unstructured information to help the WHO share epidemiological data with its staff, public health bodies, member states, and other health actors around the world, in a timely way.

The WHO’S Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources initiative (EIOS) aims to develop a unified global early warning system, using open source information – such as news articles and reports – to identify, verify, and assess potential public health threats.

The EIOS system manages, filters and helps contextualise information on specific public health topics, so it can be made available to the EIOS community of experts across the globe.

The WHO said the system picked up the first article relating to Covid-19 at the end of December, and by midmarch was collating over 120 000 articles on the outbreak a day.

Amazon Web Services said it is now helping the WHO to develop a tool to enable the global health body to collect and analyse high volumes of Covid-19 related content from around the globe even more effectively.

The tool will use machine learning to help differentiate between “reliable” and “unreliable” content and will make information easier for the expert community to find and assess.

OPENWHO is the WHO’S interactive online platform, where front-line responders – including health care professionals – anywhere in the world, can access a huge catalogue of training courses on dealing with health emergencies.

AWS and Amazon are also providing fundraising support to the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the WHO.