Covid-19 outbreak: Kottayam district develops app for real-time data entry, monitoring

Amidst the Corona crisis in the country, a collector in Kerala got an app developed in five days to help the health officials in the district record and monitor people who are either quarantined or in isolation in their localities.

The app ‘Healthy Kottayam’, was developed at the request of the Kottayam district authorities by the students and alumni of Amal Jyothi College of Engineering in Kanjirapally in Kottayam district itself. The same team had developed the ‘Election Kottayam’ app, which was developed with the aim of addressing the concerns of the polling officers at their booths.

“I am not sure if only Kottayam district has such an app. The team behind this has helped us earlier too. This is a real-time data entry and monitoring app. The health workers can include symptoms also and it will show when the person can be removed from it. With this app, we will get the exact location of a person quarantined. As of today, there are 3,265 persons in the district under quarantine. All the data entered is then available on the website. But, only senior district officials can access the data as it includes personal details of the quarantined persons,” explained PK Sudheer Babu, Kottayam district collector, who initiated the process of building this app.

Babu pointed out that currently the numbers are manageable, but if they increase, it would be difficult to manage manually. “We couldn’t anticipate the numbers earlier, so we decided to take their help in creating the app. The team gave it to us in less than 10 days, which is commendable,” added Babu.

“This mobile app functions as an e-dashboard where details of each person in quarantine can be entered. The district has been split into 15 segments based on the existing blocks and municipalities. Each segment has a minimum of five Panchayats, if not more, and in each of these Panchayats, there is at least one health centre. Each health centre has one medical officer and several junior health staffers. Each of these health staffers have downloaded the app to update the information,” said Prof Manoj T Joy, Computer Science department head.

Whenever a person from the district arrives at any of the transit points such as the airport, borders or railway station, the e-dashboard gets updated. Basic details of the person’s residence appear and once the health staff goes to their homes, the rest of the information gets updated. The health staff will add details of who else in the family and neighbourhood have to be quarantined.

The status of each individual can be updated by the field staff daily, subject to approval from the medical officer concerned. The entries are classified into all cases, high risk cases and symptomatic cases.

“There are at least 800 health staff who are using the app. The District Collector approached us to develop this app and the students and alumni worked almost non-stop for almost a week to ensure we could give it before the lockdown. The app has been functional since March 23,” pointed out Joy.

Since Kerala has been in a partial lockdown from earlier itself, the students worked on various aspects of the app separately before bringing it all together. Headed by Jis Joe Mathew, an assistant professor in the computer science department, the team comprised Amal Jyothi alumni Geo James, Justin Monsi and Nikil Abraham and current final year students Jithin Jose, Joel John, Joyal Joseph, Shana James and Shan Shaji. The former students were also part of the team which developed ‘Election Kottayam’ for the Kottayam district authorities.