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How smartphones could be Covid-19 testing game changers

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the inadequacy of our existing healthcare models in performing rapid mass testing to diagnose an active infection. There could be merit in considering smartphones as testing game changers.

Fearing a return of the coronavirus wave, the government is urging healthcare equipment manufacturers to get a simple, efficient and a mass testing diagnosis mechanism. Even better, if the testing could be repeated periodically, a detection could be done incredibly early and thus a potential spread could be contained right away.

It is a well-recognized fact that early-stage testing of potential Covid-19 carriers could play an important role in containing the pandemic’s spread. South Korea is a case in point. As of 25 April 2020, South Korea, which has a population of 51.6 million, had performed 595,161 tests, as per MOHW. It reported 10,718 positive cases and 240 deaths by the date.

By contrast, as of 25 April, according to Our World in Data, the USA had carried out 5.18 million tests at rates as high as around 200,000 tests per day. It reported 200,000 positive cases and 50,000 deaths, which are 25 times higher than in case of South Korea. The USA has a population six times that of South Korea. Quite clearly, a delayed start in testing cost the USA dearly, despite carrying out tests at breakneck speeds.

How testing works

A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine is at the core of testing potential carriers of infectious diseases such as Covid-19 or even SARS or MERS for that matter. A heavy-duty PCR machine such as Cobass6800 could run up to 1,400 tests at a time while the Reverse Transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) machines could take 90 samples at a time. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved RT-PCR machines for many laboratories in the country.

In the USA, one of the world’s leading pharma companies, Abbott, announced that it had got emergency use authorization for its new portable Covid-19 testing device. “The new Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 test runs on Abbott’s ID NOWTM platform — a lightweight box (6.6 pounds and the size of a small toaster) that can sit in a variety of locations,” said an Abbott press release on 27 March. The release said the device delivered positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes.

Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation Cofounder and Cochairman Bill Gates, in his recent blog, had discussed the possibility of even simpler and smaller testing kits. He commented, “Another type of test being developed is called a Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT). This would be like an in-home pregnancy test. You would swab your nose the same way as for the PCR test, but instead of sending it into a processing center, you would put it in a liquid container and then pour that liquid onto a strip of paper that would change color if it detects the virus. This kind of test capability may be available in a few months. Even though it won’t be as sensitive as a PCR test, for someone who has symptoms, it should be quite accurate.”

Smartphones to take the baton

Paris-headquartered French pharmaceuticals major Sanofi has been quick enough to realize that lab-based testing approach, where swabs need to be taken and tested in a center isn’t going to be enough.

Sanofi, in a press release on 16 April, said it has signed an agreement with California-based startup Luminostics to evaluate a collaboration on a unique self-testing solution for COVID-19, using Luminostics’ innovative technology. As part of the agreement, Luminostics would contribute its proprietary technology for consumer-diagnostics for COVID-19 testing while Sanofi would bring its clinical research testing experience and capabilities. The goal is to provide a smartphone-based solution that eliminates the current need for healthcare professional administration or laboratory tests, it noted.

According to Sanofi, the diagnostic platform would be composed of the following three key components:

An iOS/Android app to instruct a user on how to run the test, capture and process data to display test results, and then to connect users with a telehealth service based on the results.
A reusable adapter compatible with most types of smartphones.
Consumables for specimen collection, preparation, and processing.

Luminostics notes its core innovation as “a new type of nanoparticle that is very sensitively detectable using a smartphone’s built-in camera and flash in combination with our proprietary hardware and software.”

Rapid innovation is need of the hour

Smartphone majors, chip manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, app developers, governments, and other stakeholders should get together to accelerate the evolution of personal testing kits. The Sanofi–Luminostics initiative is a good beginning, and there could be enough room to use smartphones for Covid-19 testing far more intuitively and accurately, if more companies start assigning R&D brains and budgets towards the target.

For vast countries such as India, where a large part of the population is located in smaller towns and villages that hardly have such testing centers nearby, a lab-based approach would simply be inadequate. However, the ubiquitous presence of smartphones holds the potential of making instant testing possible for the masses.

It could revolutionize affordable testing for a country like India, which could only complete 6,500 tests by 13 March and was able to complete 579,957 tests by 25 April. With a population of 1.3 billion, that adds up to a mere 0.045%. Also, in the 40 days that India was able to add these 573,347 tests, the number of corona-positive people have gone up to 27,109 and 872 people had lost their lives, , as per data published by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Moreover, the economy has come to a literal standstill.

The situation could have been different, had a mechanism been in place for using smartphones for Covid-19 testing on a mass scale. Hundreds of million people would have gotten tested in a matter of hours and the results would have been uploaded to a central government repository. Quite probably, we would have taken the number of positive cases within three digits, if not less. Best, there would be no lockdown!

That’s where Aarogya Setu fits in neatly

Aarogya Setu has been a timely development and is comfortably placed to be a pivotal cog in the testing-and-containment wheel.

It is no coincidence that ‘setu’ is a vernacular word for ‘bridge,’ as it attempts to serve as a safety bridge for users against the spread. Once smartphone-based testing kits and apps get into play, Aarogya Setu could extend its functionality by doubling up as a big data and AI tool against Covid-19.

The app could not just recommend an affected user to go into self-quarantine but also send alerts to the concerned health authorities in the area. This could lead to very timely and targeted responses by the healthcare officers as well as the local administration.

The PCR and RT-PCR machines could still serve the purpose of further testing for more precise diagnostics before discharging a patient. However, the heavy lifting could be done by the people themselves, using their smartphones.

The smartphones-based approach would also greatly reduce the exposure risk for medical, healthcare, and police personnel. Already, a number of doctors and healthcare workers risk getting infected by coming into contact with positive but untested cases.

Buzz of the week: Will FB–Jio deal create magic?

The recent announcement made by Facebook to invest ₹43,574 crore for a 9.9% stake in Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jio Platforms has created enormous interest in the Indian market (see details of the FB-Jio in this RIL release).

The coming together of Reliance Jio, with nearly 400 million telecom subscribers; and Facebook, with about 300 million Indian users, is a significant market development by all measures. It has the potential of giving restless nights to their rivals. At the same time, it could raise the interest of Facebook’s rival digital behemoths such as Google in RJio’s rival telcos such as Airtel. Consequently, the attractiveness of India’s telecom sector may be expected to go up in terms of valuation, global partnerships and capital raising.

No wonder, while Reliance Industries’ shares jumped 10% on the deal, Airtel’s shares too rose by a notional 1%. As part of the agreement, WhatsApp is expected to strengthen Jio’s new retail business on the JioMart platform while Jio Platforms will support small businesses on WhatsApp.

Though onlookers see the FB-Jio deal largely disrupting India’s retail sector, it is also expected to revolutionize many future ideas. After all, a key challenge that India has been facing to take its digitization efforts to the next level has been the absence of a cohesive ecosystem, which the partnership could help address.

The path, however, is not without some tough challenges.

Today, the industry offers several fragmented channels to telecom and digital users—from payment services to collaboration tools and entertainment. Both small businesses and consumers have multiple choices to opt from. While this is great for users, not many people like the idea of using multiple mobile apps for different purposes. There was a brief period when, after demonetization, Paytm was emerging as the de facto player, but that is no longer the case. Today, it faces strong market competition from giants such as Amazon and Google, as well as from homegrown players such as PhonePe.

Facebook, thanks to its incredibly popular WhatsApp messaging services, is sitting uniquely in the world’s fastest growing marketplace. And by collaborating with Reliance Jio, country’s largest telecom player, they together have the potential of creating a one-stop digital shop that India has long been waiting for.

It is worth noting that while Reliance Jio already has a license for its JioMoney payments platform, WhatsApp is yet to receive a license for rolling out a payment service for all its users in India (it has got the clearance to do a phased rollout, while the final approval remains subject to meeting compliance all requirements set by the government).

With the FB-Jio deal in place, the duo could leverage each other’s capabilities for mutual benefits and compete with existing payment providers in a major way

Besides retail and payment services, if executed precisely, this alliance could also pave the way for Jio to offer exclusive services such as virtual education, premium mobile conferencing, food delivery, digital entertainment among others instantly using WhatsApp.

It is significant that just two days after the deal, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced new collaboration and conferencing features and capabilities for WhatsApp.

WhatsApp, being the favored mode of communication for a majority of smartphone users in India, indeed has the potential to drive Jio’s ambitions of becoming the largest mobile digital player in the world. More so, with most of the population expected to stay indoors even after the lockdown is gradually phased out, the market will need innovations and digital products that can meet consumer need at their convenience. It is not mere coincidence that the FB-Jio deal has come through when the world is still adjusting to the social distancing conditions triggered by Covid-19.

On a concerning note, this deal also proposes a risk of monopoly, and may invite scrutiny from authorities such as Competition Commission of India.

Covid-19: Reimagining work with a zero-trust lens

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in widespread lockdowns. Commuting to workplaces has been suspended for all but a few essential-service organizations and personnel. To ensure business continuity, many organizations had to rush almost overnight to implement work-from-home (WFH) policies for their entire workforce. Understandably, when viewed from a ‘zero-trust lens,’ few have found themselves fully equipped to handle the surge in WFH scale, which is testing the robustness of the IT security fabric.

The state of running entire operations remotely is unprecedented! IT heads are scrambling with issues such as infrastructure availability and sizing to meet the growing demands. From a security readiness perspective, CISOs are seen doing comprehensive assessments to map the network usage patterns and risk aspects. With more employees working remotely today than ever before, the odds of potential threats have grown manifold. The biggest challenge for CISOs today is to make necessary tools and resources available to their virtual workforce without compromising confidential data.

The practical and effective strategy that works to address this challenge is ‘zero-trust lens’ approach to information security—a contemporary lens that treats everyone who access organizational network as suspicious and distrustful.

The concept of zero trust security framework distinguishes between what’s necessary and what’s not. It stresses that everything cannot be critical and hence need not require full network access. Contrary to the trust-based perimeter defense approach, zero trust defines users and their job requirements. It provides people with adequate permissions to access applications and tools relevant to perform their job virtually, while withholding the rest of the corporate data. For instance, an HR department employee working remotely need not be given access to the sales department database.

In the current setup, it becomes even more important for CISOs to have visibility on what’s happening on the network. Looking at the fact that many employees may be accessing corporate information through personal and unfamiliar devices remotely, CISOs are expected to incorporate strong multi-factor authentication protocols to strengthen the zero-trust security framework. A strong multi-factor authentication protocol ensures controlled access to data repositories and specifies who may access information and under what conditions.

It is equally important for CISOs to educate their users regularly about not clicking insecure links and staying watchful of phishing emails, thereby preventing easy doorways to hackers and cyber crooks.

Even during these difficult times, organizations can operate to their fullest potential, if they enable their people in a right manner, using a ‘zero-trust lens’ framework to secure the borderless networks.

Work-from-home even after Covid-19?

Just when the 21st century had gone past the teens and progressed into its twenties; the Covid-19 monster appeared to halt the era’s leap forward. With so many of us confined to our homes, we have certainly slowed down. Work-from-home after Covid-19 is emerging as a viable model.

The pandemic is unthinkably big, mostly because it has engulfed almost all the countries in a very short span of time and is super contagious, even though the mortality rate is not too high. It has the potential to threaten a significant part of the global population, if not checked in time.

Covid-19 has also delivered a blow that even multiple economic slowdowns and recessions—and two world wars—could not deliver in over a hundred years.

However, even more importantly, the pandemic has singularly exposed the hollowness, triviality, and unsustainability of the dominant socioeconomic models like never before.

It has also highlighted that we haven’t made serious attempts to leverage technology for accelerating the realization of the planet’s greater goals such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The sheer fact that a large part of the workforce is successfully working from home and a significant number of meetings and conferences are being replicated online is a testimony to the potential of the technology that we conveniently choose to ignore so far. This clearly shows that a sizable chunk of the travel that we make—as individuals, organizations, or even governments—are, at best, redundant. It also demonstrates that the CIOs, CISOs, and their teams have been able to scale up their organizations to meet work-from-home demands of hundreds or even thousands of workers on the fly.

In undertaking those travels, we are not just increasing our carbon footprints on the planet but are also being counterproductive.

The pandemic is giving reason for us—individuals as well as organizations—to pause and rethink our existing work and workplace models.

It would be worth continuing with the model that has come into being almost overnight, at least in part. A model of mass work-from-home after Covid-19 looks all set to stay.

GlobalLogic earns ‘Great Place to Work’ badge

GlobalLogic, a leader in digital product engineering, has received Great Place to Work Certification by the Great Place To Work Institute, the global authority on building, sustaining and recognizing high-trust, high-performance culture at workplaces. GlobalLogic has been recognized for creating and sustaining an exemplary employee culture, and for creating shared values around performance in their organization. This prestigious recognition is earned based on extensive ratings provided by its employees in anonymous surveys.

“As a services company, our people are the most important element of our business. It gives me immense pleasure to see GlobalLogic recognized by Great Place To Work Institute once again this year,” said Sumit Sood, Managing Director, Asia Pacific (APAC), GlobalLogic. “It speaks of the effort that our teams make every day to make GlobalLogic an amazing workplace for our employees, and a desirable destination for the top talent in the industry.”

“Our Great Place To Work journey began in 2016 and we received Great Place to Work Certification and got featured in Top 50 Great Places to Work in 2017. This consistent recognition is a testament to our company’s steadfast focus on creating an enabling and enriching environment for the employees and keeping it as a top goal amongst other business objectives,” said Neeru Mehta, Vice President, People Development, GlobalLogic. “Our commitment to further strengthening our people’s practices, culture and pride that our GlobalLogic employees carry with themselves, is indeed a reason of our success we hold today.”

With over 16,000 employees, GlobalLogic is one of the global leaders in helping organizations build their next generation digital products and experiences. The company has always strived towards creating a high-performing and collaborative culture, and an environment that provides independence and empowerment to its employees, helping them accomplish greater heights.

Great Place to Work Institute’s methodology is recognized as rigorous and objective and is considered as the ‘Gold Standard’ for defining great workplaces across businesses, academia and government organizations. Every year, more than 10,000 organizations from over 60 countries partner with Great Place to Work® Institute for assessment, for benchmarking and planning actions to strengthen their workplace culture. Great Place to Work uses the results of surveying millions of employees and examining thousands of the best workplaces around the globe. The list of corporations that receive acknowledgments each year is the result of a climate and organizational culture study that measures conduct, behaviours, and working environment.

GlobalLogic is a leader in digital product engineering. It helps its clients design and build innovative products, platforms, and digital experiences for the modern world, by integrating strategic design, complex engineering, and vertical industry expertise. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, GlobalLogic operates design studios and engineering centers around the world, extending its deep expertise to customers in the communications, automotive, healthcare, technology, media and entertainment, manufacturing, and semiconductor industries.

Rural Women from Assam make masks, sanitizers

Rural Women Technology Park (RWTP) under CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology, Jorhat, Supported by SEED Division, Department of Science and Technology (DST), has engaged rural women to prepare various products such as hand sanitizer, homemade mask, and liquid disinfectant to be distributed freely among family members and poor people in the nearby villages to help combat COVID 19 in the area.

“Meeting a challenge such as COVID-19 needs strong community participation and support. Self-help groups and dedicated NGOs are perfect vehicles in the current scenario for awareness creation, introducing relevant solutions, making and distributing the low-tech items such as masks and disinfectants,” said Professor Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST.

Rural women from the region were trained to produce homemade mask from traditional ‘gamocha’ (a traditional Assamese cotton towel) by RWTP, Jorhat. Design of the home made mask has been finalized, around 150 gamochas purchased and two sewing machines arranged (6 homemade masks can be prepared from one gamocha).

It has been proposed that the women be paid at the rate of Rs 15 per mask. Apart from this, 200 liters of liquid disinfectant is being produced. The raw materials required for liquid disinfectant like dettol, ethanol, glycerine, essential oil have been acquired. The disinfectant will also be distributed freely among the family members and poor people in the nearby village.

The women of RWTP were trained before closing down on March 24. The participant women prepared about 50 litres of hand sanitizer, 160 litres of liquid disinfectant which have been distributed among the 60 women participants and their family members. The RWTP also prepared posters and leaflets on ‘COVID19 : Do’s and Don’ts’ in Assamese language for making people aware about the Corona Virus and precautionary measures to be taken during the present situation.