Hackathon fights Ebola outbreak

Ebola- the fatal disease that has took the lives of million of people and is out breaking speedily. To fight with such a deadly virus, besides health workers and fast track vaccines, software developers are also contributing their work in such a war.
To help West African communities, who are getting ruined by such disease, Ebola Crisis Hackathon is developed with the help of various students and physicians at the University of Oxford earlier this month.

Describing the infrastructure of the system, Paul Brodersen, a researcher, describes one of the tool which automatically detects affected people appearing in a video and measures their pule using image analysis. To achieve this goal, a technique named Eulerian Video Magnification is used. It works even with a simple webcam. It works by amplifying the red tones in a person's face. The insidious variation in redness over time gives the pulsing of blood.



When combined with handheld infrared thermometers already in use in the affected countries, the system allows people to be quickly assessed and then sent for the most appropriate treatment at health centres. That's because there is a characteristics slowing of the pulse as the fever seen in Ebola reaches its peak.

Garfee Williams, a Liberian doctor who works for the charity Africa, has been involved in the fight against Ebola since the current outbreak began in March. He is impressed with this form of triage. "It would boost the confidence of our health workers, who would know they are working with a tool that means they don't have to have lots of contact with patients," he says.

For the system to be useful, however, there must be health workers in place. With this in mind, another team at the hackathon has come up with a real-time map displaying the locations of Ebola cases and medical staff. The idea is to show where suitably trained health professionals need to be stationed in order to contain an outbreak most effectively.
Slowing the Spread:

Williams says that even small changes in the placement of doctors can have a significant impact on Ebola's spread. "By just increasing numbers of health workers at some outposts from two to four, we see results like fewer people becoming sick in that area," he says. One member of the mapping project is programmer Chris Rex, who previously worked with the New York Police Department to create a live map of police officers' locations. "If we can improve transparency and let people know where the resources are, you can do a much better job of helping them make operational decisions," he says.

But before you can map where doctors are, you need to know just who they are. This is where team leader and medical doctor Alexander Finlayson of the University of Oxford, comes in.
Finlayson recently helped establish the MedicineAfrica social network, which covers Somaliland. He's hoping to extend the platform to compile a database of West African doctors in the midst of the Ebola crisis, information which can then be plugged into the live map.

What about situations when doctors and nurses just aren't available at all? In Sierra Leone, for example, there are 45,000 people for every doctor. A system which helps members of the public assess their own symptoms could be of help.

The idea is to use a simple questionnaire sent by text message to evaluate symptoms and place people in one of four risk categories. Basic questions such as "do you have a fever?" are followed by questions that look at epidemiology, such as "have you taken part in a burial ritual recently?" Coming into contact with the bodies of Ebola victims during funerals has allowed the disease to spread, so a simple yes or no answer, also sent by SMS, would move the respondent along a flow chart of risk factors.