Devpost said it's working with a number of partners including the WHO to find "key challenge areas" that tech innovation could help solve. Those areas include: accurate disease-prevention information "in languages/formats that resonate locally, as well as regional needs for expertise, resources/supplies and financial support from donors."
The organization is focused on seven major areas, but suggested that developers use the technologies of their choice in any way they think they can make an impact. The seven highlighted areas include:
- Health: Address and scale a range of health initiatives, including preventative/hygiene behaviors (especially for at-risk countries and populations), supporting frontline health workers, scaling telemedicine, contact tracing/containment strategies, treatment and diagnosis development.
- Vulnerable populations: Problems faced by the groups of people who are disproportionately affected by the various health, economic, and social issues related to the COVID outbreak around the world, such as those with underlying health conditions or a thin social safety net.
- Businesses: The set of problems that businesses are facing to stay afloat, collaborate effectively, and move parts of their business online.
- Community: Promoting connection to friends, family, and neighbors to combat social isolation and the digitizing of public services for local governments.
- Education: Alternative learning environments and tools for students, teachers, and entire school systems.
- Entertainment: Alternatives to traditional forms of entertainment that can keep the talent and audiences safe and healthy.
- Other: The above themes are just suggestions. Feel empowered to get creative!
The organization is working with a variety of companies, including Oculus, Uber, Evernote, Twitter, Twilio, Venmo, IBM, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Highlighted projects will be announced April 10.
N.Y. Times releases coronavirus dataset
The New York Times made public its comprehensive datasets on coronavirus cases in the U.S. after requests from researchers, scientists, government officials and businesses looking to better understand the virus and model how the pandemic might evolve. The datasets are available on GitHub.
The Times has been tracking cases since late January "after it became clear that no federal government agency was providing the public with an accurate, up-to-date record of cases, tracked to the county level, of people in the U.S. who had tested positive for the virus," the company said in a statement.
"We hope the dataset can help inform the ongoing public health response to the pandemic and ultimately, save lives," said New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet. "We believe the data may help reveal how Covid-19 has spread through communities and clusters; which geographic areas may be hit the hardest; and how its spread in hard-hit areas may offer clues for regions that could face wider outbreaks in the future."
The CTI cybersecurity effort
A growing number cybersecurity professionals calling itself the "CTI League" has banded together to help hospitals fend off hackers and other bad cyberactors. The group now has about 500 members worldwide and was launched earlier this month by Ohad Zaidenberg, lead cyber threat intelligence researcher at Israeli firm ClearSky Security; Nate Warfield and Chris Mills, security researchers at Microsoft; and Marc Rogers, executive director of security at Okta and an organizer of the DefCon hacking conference.
"If some hospital gets attacked by some ransomware and wouldn't be able to pay, people will die because they wouldn't be able to get the medical services needed," Zaidenberg told NBC.
The CTI League, which collaborates on its efforts using Slack, looks for vulnerabilities hackers are targeting, then searches for hospitals or other medical facilities that may be vulnerable. "The first thing we want to do is neutralize attacks before they happen. The second is to help any medical organization after they are attacked," Zaidenberg said.
Rogers told DARKreading.com that the CTI League has members in 40 countries. "It's important to us that this is a global effort, because this is a global threat. That's why we made the call worldwide, and were delighted when the world responded."
Kaggle touts machine-learning challenge
Kaggle, an online community for data scientists and a platform for competitions, has unveiled a new bounty-paying challenge: the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge, or CORD-19.
CORD-19 asks AI and machine learning researchers to develop text and data-mining tools to analyze a dataset that includes tens of thousands of articles on virology and infectious disease. The goal is to help provide answers for 10 tasks, or lines of inquiry about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The prize for each of the tasks in the challenge is $1,000, delivered as cash or as a charitable donation to research and relief efforts.
Intel allocates $6M for coronavirus relief
The Intel Foundation plans to provide $4 million to back coronavirus relief efforts in areas where the company has a significant presence and is offering up to $2 million in matching funds for every regular full-time and part-time employee and U.S. retiree who wants to contribute to the COVID-19 fight. Intel will match contributions made until April 10.
The $4 million donation is aimed at community foundations and organizations focused on food security, shelter, medical equipment and small-business support. The matching donations will go to food banks, school districts and children's hospitals helping local communities manage the pandemic's impact.
In the U.S., donations are targeted at several states, including Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas. Internationally, donation areas include Costa Rica, India, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam.
Facebook offers up Messenger
Social networking giant Facebook on March 23 unveiled two initiatives to help governments fight the pandemic using its Messenger chat service.
"We're partnering with our developer community to provide free services to government health organizations and UN health agencies to help them use Messenger to scale their response to the COVID-19 crisis," Facebook said. It highlighted efforts by Argentina's Ministry of Health to provide updated, accurate information about the coronavirus.
UNICEF and Pakistan are also using Messenger to share information and advice about coronavirus.
Facebook is also working with the Devpost hackathon project aimed at fighting COVID-19.
Also see: Coronavirus prompts collaboration tool makers to offer wares for free and Free security resources for work-from-home employees during the COVID-19 crisis
With reports from Michelle Davidson, Thor Olavsrud, Galen Grumman, Tim Green, Sharon Machlis, Serdar Yegulalp, Scott Carey, Eric Knorr and Amy Bennett.