Well, nothing much has been learnt from the Spanish flu history at least on the technological front, wondering why am I saying this? Let me ask you a question.

When was the last time you were able to get your hands on a trustable and verified covid19 resources website. Can’t find that date or moment right?

Here is where the issue lies, the pandemic of 1918 which was by far the worst pandemic in history, had left many things for us to be learnt and when confronted again by the next pandemic we aren’t applying the desired changes in our framework. Like appropriate resources, trusted websites and much more.

But here I’ve got a solution for you, https://covid19verifiedresources.in/ a simple one click website, wherein you shall get all the details about any particular services which you require during Covid19 treatment. 

Not only it provides relevant  information but also it is verified by actual users. What’s better than that?

Every company boasts about its services but a customer can only give an actual review or verification to another customer. 

How was this idea conceived?

Not to much surprise any astute idea is developed only when you or you see someone facing an issue regarding something. 

So was my case, this idea struck me when I saw my CEO Leonard Selveraja facing an issue with finding ethical and verified resources in a short span of time.

Either the resources seemed dubious or they were in the format of excel sheets, PDF’s or whatsapp texts, which makes a person in a hurry anxious. 

The underlying errors which I discovered was 

• Lack of systematic database and mismanagement/duplicity of information through scrupulous means.
• Lack of verified data.

All of these issues sow the seeds of curiosity and a desire to address this issue for the benefit of the upcoming covid patients.

Development Phase

Since we were looking for some reliable data, we need to get our hands on some trusted social networking site. TWITTER! Just as the way the name struck your mind, it struck mine. 

What's a better source than Twitter, not just India but the whole world was clamouring about their experiences and those were actual patient’s experiences and not some experience shared by some hospitals.  

We gathered some volunteers who righteously gathered some verified resources through posting across India and added them to a common database for the access of the common public.

What’s interesting about these mediums is that they allow you to write hashtags about the text you’ve written. Which enables the person in dire need to gather all the texts under that hashtag and use it for his advantage. We downloaded all of those texts and images using Twitter API (Application Programme Interface).

Hashtags used - #covidverifiedresource

We decided to create a simple to operate, accessible & systematic platform for finding verified resources & toto ensure that a particular medical resource is timely available to the person who is in dire need of it. 

To our surprise, at one instance our team was streaming around 1Lac tweets on a daily basis. Honestly, the twitter hashtag scanner was essentially the heart of the project. 

Volunteers

Before anything, I would like to thank my team of hardworking volunteers, who stood up to support a major concern for the betterment of the common public.

We amassed a team of 44 volunteers, whose support was perennial towards the achievement of the set goal. They successfully, gathered all the tweets from the source and marked its credibility on the resource portal.( https://covid19verifiedresources.in/)

Let me tell you an interesting thing, in less than a month’s time frame pur team was able to add over 800 verified resources on the portal. That’s commendable right! I’m proud of them too!

Whatsapp Bot

We had a special and hidden volunteer in our team throughout our journey, Whatsapp Bot. Yes! You read it right.To make finding of the resources even more convenient, we introduced our special volunteer that facilitated the use of machine learning principles to make the entire task hassle free and less time consuming.

So, this is how an idea lead to a transformation into a resourceful website with the help of our volunteers. It was truly a team effort. The website is up & running with verified data being updated regularly. 

Above that, you can contribute in too, NO I’m not asking for some money, you can simply contribute by adding some verified resources to the portal, only those data which has been personally verified by you.

As a generous person, I would request you to make the website best of your use and spread it to as many people as you can as “A part of being human is about helping others”.