Israeli apps helping contain pandemic : 'The sound of coronavirus'

(AFP)

One app tells you if you've got been within the vicinity of a coronavirus carrier and another aims to assess whether you have COVID-19 supported the sound of your voice.

In Israel, sometimes dubbed the "start-up nation" with nearly 10 percent of workers employed in high-tech, the coronavirus pandemic has seen a flurry of latest technologies designed to contain transmission.

Start-Up Nation Central, an NGO, has compiled a directory of some 70 Israeli technology companies developing responses to the new virus, which has infected quite 4,000 people within the country.

One app that has stood out thus far is Hamagen, Hebrew for "the shield", launched earlier this month by the health ministry.

Using geolocation technology, the app informs users about any points of contact with known COVID-19 cases.

Available in five languages, Hamagen has been downloaded by quite 1,000,000 users.

The fortunate ones receive messages saying "no points of intersection are found with coronavirus patients".

"We'll allow you to know if there's anything new," it adds.

Hamagen was launched amid an issue over plans to involve Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency within the fight against the virus.

Critics warned that allowing a strong investigative body access to non-public devices without a writ could mark an irrevocable setback within the effort to safeguard data protection.

Israel's highest court ruled that any Shin Bet involvement required parliamentary oversight.

Hamagen requires user consent and therefore the health ministry has assured that "GPS data doesn't leave your mobile , and isn't sent to any third party".

- 'Sound' of corona -

The defence ministry has meanwhile offered support to an Israeli start-up called Vocalis Health, which is developing an app capable of diagnosing COVID-19 supported the sound of someone's voice.

"We are working round the clock," Tal Wenderow, the start-up's co-founder, told AFP.

Voice samples from virus carriers in various stages of illness and samples from non-infected people are currently being collected, with the goal of developing an AI-based algorithm to detect COVID-19's vocal "fingerprint".

Health professionals will then be ready to alert users within the early stages of the disease and use the app to watch its spread across the population.

The response from people willing to offer voice samples has been "overwhelming", Wenderow said.

In addition to helping curb new infections, the app could also allow patients to be monitored reception , he added.

Israel's largest hospital, the Sheba center , has already been using nascent technologies to guard staff caring for coronavirus patients.

"The guideline is to form sure there's as little contact as necessary between medical teams and patients," said Professor Eyal Leshem, director of Sheba's centre for travel medicine and tropical diseases.

To that end, Sheba monitors patients in mild condition through "telemedicine", which allows vital signs to be communicated to staff via sensors connected to a patient's phone "without needing for direct contact", Leshem told AFP.

"We used this in our in-patient treatment -- now when we're shifting from containment to mitigation, we're getting to start using an equivalent technologies to watch patients reception ," said Leshem.

Sheba also has an innovation and research centre, which is functioning to gather "all meta-data from COVID-19 patients".

"As we've more and more data accumulated, we'll be ready to identify markers of severe disease, identify prognostic factors for hospitalised patients in the least levels, and potentially use this data to spot treatment opportunities," he said.

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