How Open Source Developers are working to help fight COVID-19?

Programmers around the world are forced to work at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But apart from working, open-source developers have come together to help the world in combating the Coronavirus pandemic.

The world has already seen how the latest technologies like Machine Learning, AI, and Blockchain Technology are being used to fight the Covid-19. Well, we will see how various open source projects are doing their best to fight the Corona pandemic, in this blog.

Before getting into the open source projects, we will see some of the basics like the definition of open source and open access softwares and much more.

An Overview of Open Access and Open Source Softwares

Open Access is the methodology of making available valuable data, research, case studies, and other literature to the public free of charge. It’s not tied up with any legal, financial, or technical barriers. The information thus collected can be read, copied, distributed, or modified.

Such movements aim to make people aware of the latest findings by experienced eminent personalities. It’s an effective way of empowering the readers and keeping them updated.

Open Source Softwares also follow the same pattern as free access information. Here it deals with software and other applications that are used in various devices like computers, mobile phones, etc.

The software thus created can be used free of charge, and modified for the betterment of its functionality, which is a widely appreciated policy by the majority! Some of the leading examples of open-source operating systems include Ubuntu, Linux, Android, etc.

How do Open Source Platforms Play Their Role during the COVID Pandemic?

This is the time the whole technology world has to come forward to do their best to fight the Corona pandemic. Every tool and software has to be made available to the persons who are trying their best to control the present situations. It can be helpful to the medical personalities, Governing bodies, and others to do their best. 

Another exciting thing is that even some of the leading Fortune 500 companies are playing their part in fighting the pandemic. Pfizer has begun to offer its tools and software to the scientific community through an open-source platform. It’s named COVID-19 response plan.

Donating Your Computing Power

Enormous computing power is required for various people related to fighting the pandemic. Many open source developers who are presently unable to provide their skills in combating the virus are even offering their computing power to the needful for the same. This is a welcome step towards our fight against the Coronavirus spread.

The scientific community gets benefited from this movement and in the hope that to understand the disease more efficiently and thus find a cure for the same.

Let us now delve into various projects developed by the open-source community for fighting the Covid 19.

CHIME by PennSignals

CHIME stands for COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics. It’s an open-source platform developed by the data scientist of the University of Pennsylvania. Chime enables the hospitals to have a better understanding of the virus and its effect on hospital demand. 

The hospitals can make use of CHIME for getting estimates of how many people will need the hospital services, ICU beds, ventilators over the coming days. With the data available from the software, which are input by the users, they can proactively plan accordingly.

CHIME is built using the Python language and uses the Pandas Open Source Dependency for estimating the news that arrives in the future for the hospitals. The significant advantage of Pandas is that they do have a robust and efficient team for support.

This Python library is the best one available right now for data analysis and interpretation. They depend on the user’s support for generating revenue. The UI/UX design process used behind the same platform is also praiseworthy!
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Real Time COVID-19 Visualization by Locale.ai 

This project helps to track the total number of reported Corona cases around the world. Locale.ai provides this information in the form of maps. Locale.ai is the best open-source platform for monitoring the newly added Corona cases and the spreading rate. Some of its features include live updates, data representation with the help of visual graphics.

This API was developed by a GitHub user and makes use of the database collected from John Hopkins University. The data set provided by John Hopkins is a bundle of multiple information related to the Corona pandemic.

The visualization of the website is built using the Vue.js framework. It’s one of the best structures available for creating modern and user-friendly web applications.

DXY-COVID 19- Crawler by BlankerL 

DXY-COVID 19- Crawler is one of the earliest response mechanisms developed by the Open source community. It was created in January 2020, which is during the beginning of the spread of the virus. The data provided through this website is widely used by the medical and academic researchers to visualize and analyze the spread of the virus.  

The web crawler of the application was written in Python and a package named Beautiful Soup. Beautiful Soup allows the Python developers to fetch information from websites. It is maintained by a software architect named Leonard Richardson.
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Other Open Source Projects

There are also many projects being built by the open-source community in response to the Corona pandemic. It is only expected to increase since the world is going through difficult times. 

If you are working on a similar project, then please do share below in the comments. It helps to spread the word and may be useful to many. Let’s do our part and hope this pandemic is under control soon.

Stay Inside and Stay Safe folks!

Premjith B P K

Premjith leads the Digital Marketing team at Aufait Technologies, a pioneer in developing DMS Software for organizations. He also heads the SEO team at Mindster, a frontier Android app development company and UI UX design company in India. With his 4 valuable years of experience in online marketing, he helps clients expand their online presence and mushroom novel business ideas.