JKUAT launches contact tracing app, ventilators to help address COVID-19 pandemic
NAIROBI,
Kenyan university on Wednesday introduced a computer-based contact tracing case management application and ventilators to help address COVID-19 pandemic.
Victoria Ngumi, vice chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), said that the application known as contact tracing and case management web and mobile application is meant to help identify who, where and when someone gets into contact with a COVID-19 patient.
"The innovation displayed before us is an application that will be used to trace, triage and manage COVID-19 cases," Ngumi told journalists during the launch at the university.
Ngumi said that the application includes triaging and case management functions that are primed to solve the cumbersome nature of manual records in most hospitals across the country.
She said that the university has developed innovations based on a challenge by the government to research institutions and individual innovators to provide solutions aimed at mitigating this dreaded disease.
According to the vice-chancellor, the fight against COVID-19 is at a critical point that has prompted an outpouring of creativity in other areas. The application was developed by the students.
Ngumi also launched two portable prototype ventilators that have been developed by students and engineers from the university to fill the shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said that the ventilators that have been developed by a multidisciplinary team of 25 engineers from the university can run continuously on a 12-voltage battery, electricity or solar.
The official said that the researchers used about 85 percent of locally available materials to come up with the innovations.
"Besides the ventilators' portability, they are light in weight, and could easily be transported and used at any point of need," she said. (Xinhua)
