JACKSON, Miss. – Friday, the City of Jackson with Chrysalis Partners, launched its new COVID-19 Symptom Collector; the latest measure taken by Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in the City’s response against the coronavirus.
The tool allows individuals to report their symptoms in real-time, from the safety of their own homes, while avoiding unnecessary visits to overburdened hospitals and testing facilities. This early detection system allows local government to clearly see what was previously a significant blind spot: residents staying at home that may have the virus and may soon require testing and care.
The data submitted by the public is made available to government and health officials within seconds of submission so that new potential virus hotspots can be identified and monitored in near real-time. An interactive map allows authorized users to view the data in a geospatial presentation and zoom into their respective jurisdictions.
With this new system, cities, counties, states, health officials, hospitals and first responders can get an early warning about areas where cases are likely to spike, allowing them to anticipate resource requirements and position services like mobile testing facilities where the need is greatest.
The web-based platform can be used with a mobile phone, tablet or laptop computer and therefore does not require any special equipment or devices, making it easy for anyone, anywhere to use. The tool is capable of capturing latitude/longitude coordinates – with the user’s permission – so that symptom reports can be mapped to granular locations that will assist government and public health officials. The system also provides custom alerts to municipal leaders to ensure that the most current data is available as needed.
Embedded in the Symptom CollectorTM is a specialized cough-sounds collection tool, to allow anyone experiencing a cough to submit audio of their cough sounds. This data is being used to “train” a ground-breaking AI tool being rapidly developed to distinguish between the “COVID Cough” and at least 12 other kinds of coughs, including COPD, asthma, emphysema, bronchitis and lung cancer. Once completed, this tool will allow users to get their results in minutes.
Data experts at Chrysalis Partners (www.Chrysalis.Partners) designed the Symptom CollectorTM in collaboration with AI scientist Dr. Michelle Archuleta who is the lead scientist developing the AI Tool. Dr. Archuleta, who attended the University of New Mexico majoring in Chemical Engineering and applied Mathematics with focus on artificial intelligence and cancer research, also did her post-doctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard where she learned artificial intelligence from world experts. Dr. Archuleta has worked on a variety of projects in artificial intelligence from building temporal convolutional neural networks to predict temporal dynamics in gene regulation, to leading a team funded by DARPA that developed multiscale deep learning models using high-resolution imaging data.
Prior to her work with DARPA, she founded an AI-assisted Natural Language Processing company called AIpiphany which simplifies complex doctors’ notes into plain language to help patients better understand and comply with doctors’ instructions. AIpiphany was funded by NSF in 2017.
“Mayor Lumumba is an incredibly forward-thinking innovator. He and his team knew exactly what they wanted, and moved decisively to activate this tool for the city of Jackson”, said Kitty Kolding, CEO at Chrysalis Partners. “This kind of foresight and commitment is why Jackson will continue to be a leader in technology-derived solutions and smart-city innovation for a long time to come.”
Governments and public health officials that wish to employ the system are able to log into a private, password-protected portal. The portal allows them to retrieve and access the raw data from their jurisdiction in real-time. They can also view the data on a map that can drill down to block-level granularity, and, get access to a series of dashboards and data exploration tools that model various combinations of symptoms and demographics to help identify possible scenarios, risk scores and outbreak predictions by likely severity.
Users’ data privacy is carefully managed to ensure that their information is secured, encrypted and only used to support the fight against COVID-19.
About Chrysalis Partners
Chrysalis Partners is a specialty data expression and monetization firm, based in the Denver Tech Center in Colorado. Founded by a group of veterans from data, technology and marketing industries, the firm helps companies and public sector partners of all sizes to unlock every bit of value and revenue possible from their data assets. The firm helps clients to repackage data, productize it, and humanize it and extend its value. Chrysalis also offers formal data appraisals, competitive data marketplace studies, data utilization recommendations, data partnerships, data product development and data repackaging. Through its fast-growing teams of consultants, strategists, data scientists, designers, visualizers, analysts, writers, editors and product experts, Chrysalis spins up customized teams for each client requirement, offering affordable, high impact data opportunity solutions.