The “Close Contacts” screening application developed by a team led by Tsinghua University Professor Shi Yuanchun and Associate Professor Yu Chun has been officially launched in one of the key frontline areas of the novel coronavirus - Zengdu District, Suizhou City, Hubei Province.
The application is already achieving much-needed outcomes that are contributing to local prevention and control efforts.
Of the first group of 2892 registered users, 16 people were discovered to have had close contact with confirmed or suspected cases of the virus.
The application is tailor-made to meet local needs in Zengdu District, enabling 650,000 residents to register their recent whereabouts and close contacts with people through their mobile phones.
It analyzes the real-time data and updates from confirmed patients, suspected patients, people with symptoms, and their close contacts in the area. This then identifies those that may have had a high risk of exposure.
The application uses data related to close contact events among residents rather than patients alone, and replaces time-consuming face-to-face interviews and delayed post event feedback.
On February 5th, Professor Shi Yuanchun and one of her former PhD students in Zengdu District communicated about the epidemic situation.
Learning about the difficulties of investigating epidemics, Prof. Shi immediately contacted Associate Professor Yu Chun and formed the development team for “Fight on, Zengdu!" that night.
Team members worked around the clock to develop the application. In four days, they completed the requirement analysis, front-end design and development, and close contact evaluation algorithm. The team also initiated technical specifications that supports 10,000 simultaneous connection requests.
Alibaba Cloud and Alibaba Foundation provided free technical support and services to the team. On February 10th, the application was tested and approved for official use by Zengdu District government and has been running smoothly since its launch.
Professor Shi Yuanchun's team is a world-renowned research group specializing in human-computer interaction.
The solution based on crowdsourcing technology expects to greatly enhance workflow and information flow, expanding data collection capability from limited number of investigation personnel to all personnel in the region.
According to local authorities, the application is a powerful assistant to the screening work of severely impacted areas, helping with timely monitoring and prevention of the epidemic in process.
Members of the development team include: Chen Xueshuo and Fan Jiayue from Tsinghua University，Xie Minxing from Zhejiang University，Zhang Lei (a Tsinghua alumnus) and Shen Xing from Future Interaction，and Song Xiaodong and Zhang Li from Suizhou City.
Source: Department of Computer Science and Technology
