With the scare of Ebola, we wanted to create an emergency response system that could help best prevent the growth of future outbreaks. We realized that there is a dearth of information access in third world countries -- to health information, wi-fi, and internet data.
However, we realized that there is very high mobile penetration, and it is possible to use SMS on these phones. So, we wanted to use the power of SMS to receive and deliver information. Users simply report their location, the disease, and the case count, and this information is used to predict other areas of high risk for this disease through stochastic modeling. Once we have identified areas of high risk, users who have subscribed to our service in these areas receive warnings consisting of the disease's name and symptoms they should be aware of. Hopefully, by quickly deploying such warnings and having good crowdsourced data, it is possible to significantly reduce the spread of disease.
Another component to our project, useful for epidemiologists and others, is the graphical interface. This interface consists of a 3D model of a globe, and on this globe we display a simulation of the disease's path predicted by our algorithms.
Emilee Chen for design help. Eric from MongoDB for extensive database help. Jeremy from OpenTable for help with modeling. Kshitij from Code for India critically looking at our project and awarding us Chromecasts.
