ACCUBITS' RESPONSE TO
COVID-19
The announcement of COVID-19 as a pandemic has been unsettling news for all of us. These are hard times. Our perseverance, businesses, and relationships would be tested in the coming days. Rather than being stagnant, we've decided to fight back against COVID19, to do what we can for humanity
Accubits's response to COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has remained at the forefront of our minds for months now. The situation is dire- and people from all over the world have had to change their lifestyles to adapt to it. All of us have a part to play in the fight against this outbreak. From social distancing to spreading awareness- each and every step that we take matters. Our team at Accubits wants to go the extra mile. We have been on a constant brainstorm mode for ideas that can help us defuse this situation. Our target is to flatten the curve, find a cure, and we won’t stop until we do. Following are the ways we responded to the novel corona pandemic;
Potential Therapeutic Agents against COVID19
One of the five values we live by is PIONEER CHANGE. Change is inevitable. As a company, we can face the changes happening around us as it happens, OR we can be the change-makers who change the world for the better. We’d rather be a changemaker than a stagnant one, and amid this COVID crisis, we found an opportunity to pioneer and to serve humanity. Roughly a couple of months back, our team at Accubits Invent- AI & Bioresearch lab paused our core research and decided to do our part in tackling the coronavirus. Two weeks back, we stumbled up a potential lead molecule that could evolve into a potential drug for this awful pandemic. One of the good things about this research is that we do not have to go through an entire clinical research phase since it uses commercially available drug molecules. Unfortunately, we do not have access to the resources to test it out in a real biosystem, so we decided to opensource the entire research, data, molecule structure, molecular interactions, and findings so that someone else can build on top of this.
Pandemic Management System
We've also developed a pandemic management system with a hope to slow down the spread of COVID 19. The system can provide a smooth and functional platform for the health departments to integrate various types of data sets including location-based information, user or citizen information, healthcare facility information as well as general real-time updates regarding the spread, statistics and future possibilities of the pandemic. Moreover, it provides an easy to use and informative mobile platform that can be used by all the citizen, including the patients which provide a primary symptom checker, information regarding the real-time updates of the pandemic, a location database indicating areas of risk, a secure Digital Health Card generator which gives information regarding the user’s health status, and a QR code-based scanning system that can be used by the authorities to ensure the proper follow up of isolation and quarantine measures.
COVID19 Self-test Kit
During the outbreak, the sudden influx of patients is bound to overwhelm healthcare professionals. In such cases, being able to test for COVID-19 ourselves would be a great boon. We have partnered with The De Warrenne Companies to develop a self-test kit that will allow us to self diagnose the possibility of COVID19 infection.
The self-testing kit comes with 5 swabs in a packet which can be used to test if a person is infected. The process starts with scanning the test kit packet with the COVID-19 Application, registering the testing kit, following instructions for ‘self-diagnosis’ in the application. The user has to take a swab and should keep the swab in their mouth so that it comes in close contact with the saliva further to which the swab should be placed inside the solution that comes with the testing kit. Based on the color change recorded in the app, it'll detect whether the person is infected or not.
Precautionary Self Diagnosis Methodology
Maximal voluntary inspiratory breath holding time test (MVIBHT) could be used for the pre-screening of COVID-19 infection. The MVIBHT is a simple test to evaluate functional capacities in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Slim et. al. 2018) but has the potential to be used as a method for assessing the presence of scar tissue and/or reduction in the functional lung capacity. Lung capacity deterioration could be a sign of lung disease.
For MVIBHT collection, the subjects are required to make a maximum expiration (breath-out to the fullest of your capabilities) followed by a maximum inspiration (breath-in to the fullest of your capabilities) and to hold the breath as long as possible. The process is to be performed in triplicates with 3-5 minutes of normal breathing in between and the average time is taken as the value. The method could be followed for 3-4 days consecutively to assess any variation in time presents. If a variation of more than 10 seconds occurs over 3 days, it is advisable to report to the medical professionals. This method could be practiced throughout the period of the spread of the COVID-19 to self assess any deterioration in lung capacity and/or any lung disorders.
Vision AI to Fight COVID19
AI-powered real-time video analytics can help us to flatten the coronavirus infection curve. For example, such software can detect the occurrence of a crowd in public places such as shopping malls, banks, etc. Once detected, the system can alert nearby authorities to intervene and disburse the crowd.
Another way real-time video analytics can help is by detecting if people wearing face masks. Insensitive areas, if people enter without a face mask, the system can automatically detect it and alert the authorities to take necessary actions.
We've trained multiple AI models for detecting crowd occurrence and face mask detection. This solution is particularly helpful in locations where the spread of coronavirus is in its early stages.