IT professionals aim to develop support system for dissemination of Covid information

Bengaluru A qualified group of persons from Bengaluru among other places like Hyderabad and Coimbatore are working on creating a WhatsApp bot and other technological interventions to complement the existing voice call-based support system for dissemination of Covid-19 information and to reduce the stress on the already overstretched resources

Bengaluru A qualified group of persons from Bengaluru among other places like Hyderabad and Coimbatore are working on creating a WhatsApp bot and other technological interventions to complement the existing voice call-based support system for dissemination of Covid-19 information and to reduce the stress on the already overstretched resources.

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The team, which comprises Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other software solutions startups, are using their technical expertise to streamline a volume of requests in Bengaluru, one of the worst Covid-hit cities in the country, by collating information and providing a platform to integrate both government and volunteer-driven efforts in order to gain a grip on the pandemic, people aware with the developments said.

“Last time around, there were multiple people trying to solve a problem. Chatbots hadn’t percolated as much but most of the chats happened via WhatsApp as people forwarded everything through the platform. We learnt from that and decided to use WhatsApp as a chatbot-based system. There is no soiling of information, everything is put into a google sheet which every non-profit or CSO (central statistics office) sector person knows how to use,” Gautam Prakash, co-founder and chief problem solver at Reap Benefit, a startup that devises community-based solutions, said.

Bengaluru recorded 16545 new infections in the 24 hours on Sunday and accounted for 105 fatalities out of the total 201 in the state. Karnataka reported 29744 new cases and the positivity rate was 17.87%, according to the daily bulletin of the state health department.

Caught napping for over four months since the submission of a report on Covid-19 and its imminent surge from a government-appointed technical advisory committee (TAC) in November, the B S Yediyurappa-led administration has now resorted to lockdown-like restrictions across the state to buy time and increase preparedness for rising cases.

The WhatsApp bot, which is expected to be rolled out anytime now, aims to reduce the burden on call centres that have otherwise witnessed a three-fold increase in traffic since the beginning of March with each of the 100 or so executives (working in three shifts round the clock) answering and following up on a range of requests, as reported by Hindustan Times earlier.

The techies aim to disseminate accurate inputs with the help of the rural development and panchayat raj (RDPR) department of Karnataka which is providing real time information, and the same can be accessed by pinging the bot.

Gayatri Meka from Hyper Verge, an AI startup that also channels its efforts into social capital, said that last year, the bot on WhatsApp was used to share information on the nearest ration shop to help relief work. But this time around, the requests have centered around securing hospital beds, oxygen and medicines among other information critical for treatment of Covid-19.

Last year, several leading startup founders like Mekin Maheshwari of Udhyam Learning Foundation, Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder of Vokal, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, co-founder of services startup, Urban Company, Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO of Bounce among scores of others were part of the efforts, building key software and developing solutions to help the government issue lockdown passes, provide information on the pandemic and streamline relief work.

“Basically, when a person pings for help, the bot asks for location or pincode.... then it asks what help is required, if it is hospital bed or oxygen or medicines. Then it looks up the database with hospital data close to their location, with bed count in realtime and this is shared with the user,” Meka explained.

In the wake of shortage of beds, the bot raises a request following which a volunteer group looks into it and gets back to the user.

Uma Mahadevan, principal secretary at Karnataka’s panchayat raj department, said that the professionals were also mapping resources and monitoring Twitter regularly for any request-related post and figuring out solutions for better integration.

“Lots of people are helping us develop the platform. This year, we want to continue with this effort and make it as hyper local as possible,” she said.

Meka said the platform is built in such a way that it can also be expanded to integrate work of volunteers from other cities for better reach.

“For the next few days, we are trying to get more volunteer groups on board. We know that there are so many efforts round the country, people in different cities putting together their own databases, responses, etc. This helps them reach more people and we can integrate their work with ours,” Meka said.