MNNIT Allahabad develops app to check spread of Covid-19

PRAYAGRAJ: Faced with the challenge to stop Covid-19 infection at community level and to avoid spreading of this infection, MNNIT Allahabad has developed a new mobile application which will help administration and corona control room to track suspected corona patients.

Named ‘ AMRIT ’ (Assessment, Monitoring, Reporting and Intelligent Tracking ), this mobile app would help chemist shops, medical practitioners and other organisations to submit information about suspected corona patients easily to the administration or corona control rooms.

The app would keep a track of people who are taking over the counter available medicines for suppressing symptoms like cough/cold/fever and unknowingly spreading the infection to those who are coming in their contact.

The app is designed and developed by a team of faculty members of MNNIT, including Ashutosh, Ambak, Sameer, NK Singh, Prof Shivesh Sharma, Prof Geetika, Vikalp Singh, Himanshu Kashyap and director of MNNIT Prof Rajeev Tripathi.

The admin panel of the app will keep record and information about all the registered patients or customers, chemist shops, medical practitioners and other organizations like government offices, hospitals, nursing homes etc. The app also has ASHA workers registration feature and has been designed to help ASHA workers/anganwadi workers in easily submitting the information to control room.

“Whenever a patient with cough/cold/fever/breathing problem visits a clinic or purchases these symptoms related drugs, all the information like name, mobile number, address, date and time of prescription or sale will be sent directly to corona control room”, explains Prof Tripathi. The app has facility to directly scan the QR code from patient's mobile and upload prescription which will save time in comparison to entering the details manually, however manual entry option is also there. The administration can track such suspected corona patients easily and testing can be performed which will save time and resources, he added.

Additionally the app has been designed to facilitative door to door survey by health workers/ social workers where they can easily send information about suspected corona patients in a family without any delay.

The district magistrate Bhanu Chandra Goswami formally launched this app, on Tuesday. “Administration was in touch with MNNIT for last few days to develop the app which would help in preventing community level spread of Covid-19 infections”, said the DM.

Earlier CMO (chief medical officer) Dr (Major) GS Bajpayee had called representatives of Allahabad Medical Association (AMA), drug dealers and nursing homes to gather feedback for customising the app. “We are hopeful that AMRIT app will be helpful to administration in tracking suspected corona patients with the support of nursing homes, drug dealers and ASHA workers,” said the CMO.