Researchers from Imperial College London have launched a new initiative with self-care technology platform Your.MD.
The organisations will collaborate to map and research the spread of coronavirus of people with self-reported mild or moderate COVID-19. The tool from Your.MD is called COVID-19 Symptom Mapper, which compares, analyses and maps reported symptoms worldwide to help produce a set of global norms.
The mapper has had nearly 140,000 respondents from 181 countries worldwide so far. The company is sharing the anonymised symptom data with Imperial to help the research team map the pandemic and understand how the disease is affecting people around the world.
The aim is to collect self-reported population data from people who have either already tested positive for COVID-19, or believe they have symptoms of the virus but have not been tested.
Dr Aldo Faisal, Director of the Centre in AI for Healthcare, at Imperial said “COVID has rapidly accelerated and transformed the way we are thinking and doing digital healthcare and the Your.MD COVID-19 Symptom Mapper is 1 of the many ways we are doing so.”
Professor Maureen Baker, Your.MD’s Chief Medical Officer, added: “The data from the Your.MD’s COVID-19 Symptom Mapper tracks symptoms globally, giving a unique perspective on the virus and allowing comparisons to be made between the UK and other countries.”
“It is vitally important for us to continue collecting data on symptoms of COVID-19, particularly as there are so many unknowns about the clinical course of this illness.”
