Indian AI startup creates app that alerts presence of nearby home quarantined people for Coronavirus

The massive surge in cases of Coronavirus has created a situation where governments across the world are forced to adopt a complete lockdown approach. In many cases, in the absence of actionable information and unawareness about movement of people who are quarantined in home, there is a huge risk of a rise in infection.

There’s a need to track the movement of infected people to know how many other people might have caught this infection but this needs discretion and must protect an individual’s privacy. To resolve this, Innefu Labs has come up with an application which can keep people informed when they are near someone who is infected with Covid-19 or have been advised to be in quarantine.

Called Unmaze, the company claims that this is the world’s only rapid deployment solution that is able to provide the government workable data on the movement of people. Says Tarun Wig, Co-founder, Innefu Labs, “The app works on the basis of GPS, and gives error free data of accurate movement. App users can get informed whenever they’re near an infected person who has been advised to be in quarantine. All data remains encrypted to ensure privacy

How it works

The application is mapped with the mobile phone number of the user. It picks up the geo-location of the user and the details of the devices which came in the vicinity of the device (5 – 10 meters). In case a person is identified to be infected with corona, the administrator will enter the details on the server. The solution will subsequently pick up data from those devices and identify all the locations they went to and the other devices they came in contact with. Automatically, a notification is sent to users requesting them for self quarantine. Subsequently, the devices are regularly monitored to ensure that they are not violating the quarantine. A separate alert is sent to the administrator informing him of the areas which need to be disinfected

Globally, few countries have already started implementing this solution and using it to identify contact tracing. However, it has not been made mandatory for all users. As a result, the effectiveness may be reduced. In India, looking at the critical situation, some of the state police departments have approached the company to use the solution.