Faced with a steady rise in the number of people who are either in home quarantine or in isolation, the Kottayam district administration is riding the digital wave to improve its workflow and track real-time the progress of its COVID-19 prevention activities. Healthy Kottayam, a mobile app launched by the district administration, pro-actively allows its officials and health workers to access immediate information on any cases reported in Kottayam.
According to officials, the app functions as an e-dashboard from wherein data of cases can be analysed. The status of each individual can be updated by the field staff on a daily basis, subject to approval from the medical officer concerned.
“By mapping people who may have been infected and risk infecting others, public health officials can identify and take appropriate action to connect with them over the phone and keep them under observation, isolation or recommend testing,” says an official.
By engg. college
The entries are classified into three classes - all cases, high risk cases and symptomatic cases. Structured, developed and deployed in association with the Amal Jyothi College of Engineering in Kanjirappally, Assistant Collector Sikha Surendran coordinated the initiative. Jis Joe Mathew, a faculty member of college who led the project, says the app would help the administrators to enumerate the list of patients or suspected cases from each of the municipalities and panchayats. To ensure effective operation of the system, the authority has opened a call centre to assist the users.
