AMPLYFI releases free COVID-19 information portal
The publicly-available tool aims to help provide accurate information to a wide range of user communities from the general public through to medical practitioners and researchers
Update, June 2021: The Coronavirus Gateway site (originally at www.coronavirusgateway.com) has now been retired.
In the midst of the global Coronavirus crisis, access to accurate and timely information is more important than ever. Living in an increasingly digital world we can easily find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of news, social media and government advice updates that bombard us. Information overload delivers diminishing returns and saturation point is counter-productive. To ensure that everyone is able to cut through the noise and access high-quality information, AMPLYFI directed its deep-tech capabilities to building a COVID-19 information portal in early 2020. Its purpose was to ensure that every member of society, from the general public through to medical, emergency and research practitioners, were as well informed as possible. The platform used AI to analyse and curate content collected daily from trusted sources such as Johns Hopkins CSSE, the World Health Organisation, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control etc. and integrated this with live updates and machine analysis of leading news, government, academic, patent, and industry content.
Whilst we do not claim to be medical experts, we are certainly expert at mining the internet and connecting ‘hard-to-find’ and gold standard information sources. In doing so, we aimed to ensure that people have the best and most comprehensive information available concerning COVID-19. By using AI to find and connect multiple sites, the platform saved users from having to conduct multiple searches or visit and crawl through sites individually. In this way, we bridged the chasms that exist between proven medical discoveries, clinical practice, event statistics, advice, and news reporting to enable better informed and efficient decision-making for multiple user communities.
By self-funding and not relying on sponsorship or third-party funding in making the tool publicly available, the portal was able to remain unbiased in its sourcing and presentation of information. Most importantly, it allowed users to self-optimise, find, and access content that they determine is most relevant to themselves. They were then free to draw their own conclusions based on the best information available and without anybody attempting to influence their opinions.
What features were there?
Various artificial intelligence techniques such as NLP and pattern recognition were used to enable users to find and access information as efficiently as possible. The global map showed the confirmed status of cases around the world. Users could hover over each country to show the official statistics for each specific location and then click to access content relevant to that geography. Filtered content related to topics such as Diagnosis, Prevention, Travel etc. could be accessed by selecting the appropriate tab. This content could then again be filtered according to the original content source type i.e. academic, clinical, government, news etc. Clicking on the Topic Wheel, which displays the key words, terms and phrases that the machine found across all of the content, enabled users to explore and drill down into specific areas of interest.
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