ROURKELA: As families scramble for resources to save lives of their infected kin, an 18-member student team of the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) is helping them to connect and access Covid-19 resources like oxygen, medicines, hospital beds and plasma across states through a mobile application, BreathIn.
Led by final year biomedical engineering student Konni Vidya Sagar, the team has been working towards providing verified information on Covid resources through the application. All of the members belong to the Bliss N Bliss Club of the NIT-R literary society under the Student Activity Centre (SAC) of the institution.
Vidya, the club vice-president, said the application contains verified data and contact numbers for supply and refilling of oxygen, availability of hospital beds, plasma donors and other useful information related to Covid. “Today, social media platforms are flooded with fake or inoperative contacts and data of Covid resources which not only wastes precious time but also adds to the stress of the affected persons”, he said adding that the application aims to provide verified information to save critical time.
On a daily basis, the team collects information on Covid resources from internet and social media platforms and forwards them to the members who verify it. Only after proper verification, the details are uploaded to the app by Vidya and another member Aman Sahoo, a final year chemical engineering student. Of the 80 to 100 numbers that the team verifies daily, only 10 to 15 turn out to be genuine. Vidya, who is back in his hometown at Visakhapatnam, said the team has so far verified the details for Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and West Bengal.
“The data of West Bengal was taken up on a priority basis after my father K Prasad Rao, a Central paramilitary force personnel, returned home from his election duty there and feared infection explosion in the state for utter disregard to Covid appropriate behaviour by all during the electioneering”, he said. Vidya added that some states have been covered partially including Odisha.
The application has been made accessible by sharing its link http://breathin.glideapp.io through WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and similar platforms. While there is no easy way to know how many patients across states benefited from it, the team is upbeat after receiving 28 feedbacks on the application, mostly positive.