New App for Corona Risk Assessment: CoVis

From theoretical physics to entrepreneurship propelled by a deadly new virus: DESY physicist Ayan Paul is launching a new app against Corona with his spin-off company. It combines public data with personal information and location, providing users with a highly individualized assessment of their current risk to contract SARS-CoV-2 with recommendations for action.

The CoVis app is available now in the US and German app stores for iOS and Android. It provides users with information on the current Corona situation in their respective area in order to protect themselves optimally against the SARS-CoV-2 virus every day. For example, it reports regions with a particular risk of infection so that they can be avoided. The goal of the new app: to inform individuals, communities, companies and business or schools, hospitals and policy makers to help fight the disease and stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from spreading. The CoVis app can also support healthcare providers and public institutions in drawing up pandemic guidelines by delivering reliable data. Unlike others COVID-19 related apps, CoVis does not rely on contact tracing, nor does it collect any data from users. Privacy and data security are guaranteed.

CoVis uses robust and explainable AI to predict outbreaks and detect anomalies in disease spread using public data and feeding in existing medical knowledge into the algorithm. Combined with personalized information about age, pre-existing conditions and movement habits, CoVis helps making informed choices about which areas or places to avoid and when.

CoVis was developed by a team of young researchers. Ayan Paul, a theoretical physicist at DESY, is a member of the team, which won the Covid-19 Challenge hackathon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April 2020 and June 2020. The team of experts with different backgrounds and experiences, from UX design to public health experts, connected within minutes at the hackathon. In the team and for the app development Paul capitalizes on his knowledge and experience in detailed statistical algorithms and models, which he acquired from data analyses and interpretation of data sets from experiments at particle accelerators.

For Ayan Paul and the team, the development of the CoVis app is a chance to put a mutual vision into reality and help fight the coronavirus pandemic with their very own expertise. DESY supported the initiative early on with a grant from its DESY Strategy Fund within the context of a Corona-call, which aimed at supporting Corona related research projects. "It is one of our goals at DESY to use core competencies from basic research in physics and related fields to develop solutions to relevant questions and challenges we are facing as a society today - that includes the fight against the pandemic", said Dr. Arik Willner, Chief Technology Officer at DESY. "Ayan shows with his exemplary initiative the impact of a core competency physics brings to everyday applications: the analysis and modeling of big data and bringing probability into context."

Ayan Paul, who worked on developing CoVis next to his full-time job at DESY, is motivated by putting his knowledge and expertise to benefit society and public health. In addition, the teamwork with people he previously didn’t know is very inspirational: "I think, we succeeded so well as a team and were able to put CoVis together so quickly, because we all have the same intrinsic motivation and vision. In addition, we were all starting with a clean slate, there were no rules or defined processes of a corporate or institutional setting."

The DESY Start-up Office supported the CoVis team with designing a business plan for the app as well as coaching and consultations that led to the foundation of Covis Inc. The next steps for CoVis, which has recently been chosen as a finalist for this year´s Falling Walls conference, are offering the app in other markets and languages. In the long run Covis Inc wishes to diversify into global disease management. They aim at establishing R&D facilities for building new structures and algorithms that will help them to usher in a new era of disease management in low- and middle-income countries alongside delivering health and wellness information to millions of users in developed nations. CoVis puts user privacy and data security upfront by building these aspects into the architecture using federated computations and analytics.

DESY is one of the world’s leading particle accelerator centres and investigates the structure and function of matter - from the interaction of tiny elementary particles and the behaviour of novel nanomaterials and vital biomolecules to the great mysteries of the universe. The particle accelerators and detectors that DESY develops and builds at its locations in Hamburg and Zeuthen are unique research tools. They generate the most intense X-ray radiation in the world, accelerate particles to record energies and open up new windows onto the universe. DESY is a member of the Helmholtz Association, Germany’s largest scientific association, and receives its funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (90 per cent) and the German federal states of Hamburg and Brandenburg (10 per cent).

The CoVis app is available for free for all users and includes the following features:

  • 7 days COVID-19 forecast for all counties in the USA and all districts in Germany
  • Full score timeline for knowing your risk score history
  • All historical data and score breakdowns
  • User account to store your risk scores and breakdown if you want to create an account with CoVis (optional)
  • Account and data management (if you choose to create an account with CoVis)
For further information, please visit:
https://covishealth.com

Most Popular Now

Unlocking the 10 Year Health Plan

The government's plan for the NHS is a huge document. Jane Stephenson, chief executive of SPARK TSL, argues the key to unlocking its digital ambitions is to consider what it...

Alcidion Grows Top Talent in the UK, wit…

Alcidion has today announced the addition of three new appointments to their UK-based team, with one internal promotion and two external recruits. Dr Paul Deffley has been announced as the...

AI can Find Cancer Pathologists Miss

Men assessed as healthy after a pathologist analyses their tissue sample may still have an early form of prostate cancer. Using AI, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to...

AI, Full Automation could Expand Artific…

Automated insulin delivery (AID) systems such as the UVA Health-developed artificial pancreas could help more type 1 diabetes patients if the devices become fully automated, according to a new review...

How AI could Speed the Development of RN…

Using artificial intelligence (AI), MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training...

MIT Researchers Use Generative AI to Des…

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using generative AI algorithms, the research...

New Training Year Starts at Siemens Heal…

In September, 197 school graduates will start their vocational training or dual studies in Germany at Siemens Healthineers. 117 apprentices and 80 dual students will begin their careers at Siemens...

AI Hybrid Strategy Improves Mammogram In…

A hybrid reading strategy for screening mammography, developed by Dutch researchers and deployed retrospectively to more than 40,000 exams, reduced radiologist workload by 38% without changing recall or cancer detection...

Penn Developed AI Tools and Datasets Hel…

Doctors treating kidney disease have long depended on trial-and-error to find the best therapies for individual patients. Now, new artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed by researchers in the Perelman School...

Are You Eligible for a Clinical Trial? C…

A new study in the academic journal Machine Learning: Health discovers that ChatGPT can accelerate patient screening for clinical trials, showing promise in reducing delays and improving trial success rates. Researchers...

New AI Tool Addresses Accuracy and Fairn…

A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has developed a new method to identify and reduce biases in datasets used to train machine-learning algorithms...

Global Study Reveals How Patients View M…

How physicians feel about artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has been studied many times. But what do patients think? A team led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich...