HYDERABAD: When JSR Annamayya mentions ‘human being’ as his designation, it is clear that he is attempting to do something beyond the ordinary. Luckily, he instantly connected with J Vijay Punnarao, ACMA and V Krishna Korvvidi (software professional) as they also wanted to use their technical expertise for a social cause.
When the world was hit by COVID-19, the team of three wasted no time in creating CheckCovidNow, a web application which was designed to spot COVID cases.
“I was sleepless the night I heard about the outbreak of Coronavirus in India and decided that no one should panic even if they have a mild symptom of COVID-19 unless they are tested positive. I wanted them to rest assured and decided to develop this web app,”
says the 25-year-old from Manikonda and currently in his hometown Narasaraopet, Andhra Pradesh.
The team of three comprising JSR Annamayya (Quality Team Lead in a software company in Hyderabad), J Vijay Punnarao ACMA (SAP Functional consultant, also with a software company in Hyderabad and V Krishna Korvvidi, founder of (Karthikeya Info minds), worked together to put this up. The team also thanks National Youth Awardees Federation of India, New Delhi, for their support.
“We are happy to share the web application we designed has spotted four COVID cases which were submitted to district level medical officers in Andhra Pradesh. This was considered as the one of the important intelligence tool to have a quick finder for COVID-19 zones,” he says.
The app which went live on March 26 has over 10,000+ users so far and requires GPS Data of the user at the initial step.
Checkcovidnow informs users about the potential risk and symptoms through web application contact tracing and equips people with self-assessment tools. It also has a tool for precision tracking of high-risk patients with COVID-19 symptoms.
“We also have tools such as ‘Self-assessment test for infection mitigation’, and ‘Protect yourself and your community from COVID-19. Our web app has a set of questions where GPS location of the user is traced with respect to area name, district as well,” Annamayya adds.
The app gives 11 questions (WHO certified) in 30 seconds which are major markers for Covid-19 and users just need to press yes are no buttons. And this is the best way to assess the patient at initial stages.
“From here, it easy to identify the high-risk ones direct them to the health officials of the respective district with the details of patient’s, place and location; The doctors' team can then approach the patient physically and conduct a direct test with kits and taken up early isolation procedure if needed. If the state government accepts the idea, we would like to first kick-start this as a pilot in the state of Andhra Pradesh with bi-lingual options in Telugu and English,” the team adds.