Anthropology
Open Access

Covid-19 in India: Prospect of Crowdsourcing to Handle Public Health Crisis

Gautam Kumar Ghosh Research Scientist

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Abstract

Government of India with its mounted preventive intervention to contain wide-spread SARS Cov-2 outbreak, additionally curiously reported in its official site the COVID-19 arrangement challenge with money prize up to Rupees 1 lakhs declared so as to enable the residents with the correct data and further at getting contributions as to people and organizations who have created advancements and imaginative arrangements, bioinformatics, datasets, Apps for analysis and so on that can be utilized for reinforcing the battle against Corona. The study aimed at understanding the prospect of crowdsourcing to handle the COVID-19 outbreak in India idea throughsecondary data analysis. Integrative survey of scholastic writing on enrollment, selection, method and structure of chipping in framework that incorporates the publicly supporting methodology concentrated remotely. Published articles, study papers and media reports analyzed. The continuous activities by non-government division; and site measurements shared by crowd sourcing groups give proof that crowd sourcing can be promising instrument in health for India. However,crowdsourcing in public health fieldwould require continued adoption through research on its efficacious use and strict regulatory frame developed at the earliest.

Background

With India witnessing heightened COVID-19 induced morbidity and mortality causing public health crisis, the Governments at the union and states are on the front foot to break the transmission chain and contain coronavirus pandemic. Interestingly, India government in late March 16 2020 announced the COVID-19 solution challenge with money prize up to Rupees 1 lakhs reported in the official site [1] with a view to engaging citizens with the correct data and further at getting contributions concerning people and organizations who have created advancements and inventive arrangements, Bioinformatics, datasets, Apps for finding and so on that can be utilized for fortifying the battle against Corona.

India has seen outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases. Public health systems in India, with existing infrastructural inadequacy, face challenges because of the slow communication process: People get sick, are seen by healthcare providers, get laboratory confirmations, information flows up the channels to local health agencies, state and national governments. Each of these stages can take days, weeks or months. On the other hand, a virus can spread around the world within few days if preventive and control actions are not initiated. Crowdsourcing has proven to hold significant advantage for its capacity to generate more data, ideas and experiences to conceivably give answers or an answer for a specific theme. Various healthcare specialists and practitioners accept that it is an incredibly amazing asset especiallyin the domain of public healthcare that can be utilized to help lessen costs, make healthcare outreach increasingly proficient and save lives. Remarkably, over 60% of all underlying episode reports originate from informal casual sources [2]. Present-day crowd sourcing relies intensely upon advanced data and gets to the 'crowd' by means of the web. In most cases, the crowd consists of volunteers. The India government mooted activity planned for moving clinical exploration from a shut domain to an open joint effort between people in general and specialists and achieve implementable arrangement in a neighborhood network [3].

Digital technology innovations are known to present the possibility of improving the efficacy of the health system response to an epidemic [4]. The Ebola and Zika virus epidemics have shown the utility of mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) for improving access to testing, contact tracing, supporting frontline healthcare workers, and raising public awareness [5]. Recent evidence underscores the potential of mHealth initiatives for the provision of mental health services to support the patients and healthcare providers in dealing with the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact tracing apps have been a crucial component of COVID-19 response in countries such as China, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Israel.

Asia is getting a handle on crowd sourcing like no other region, with enormous numbers of the world's greatest or driving crowd sourcing destinations either arranged in the Asia Pacific area or controlled by customers from Asian countries. It is becoming a popular way to bring together individuals towards a common goal, and especially in emergent situations. English-language crowd sourcing destinations will in general be ruled by power clients from India [6]. Crowd sourcing is slowly becoming popular in India but is far less evolved than other developed countries. In India so far, donation-based crowd funding is the most common form. A regulatory framework relating to equity crowd funding is yet to be developed. Crowd souring in India, too, is yet to come under regulatory framework. Research studies [7,8] indicate that new technologies, including Internet devices, for example, online networking or cell phones, all combined with worldwide situating frameworks, empower another type of irresistible infectious data to be collected legitimately from citizens. This crowd sourced information keep away from perhaps persuading structure expenses and rules, can be conveyed unendingly, and can be utilized to fill in the gaps in health data. Crowdsourcing offers a constant image of disease by furnishing data as people are analyzed, or even beforehand. Additionally, these instruments can spatially extend information in places that current surveillance do not cover. Another favorable position of working legitimately with general population is that it growscommitment for and engages individuals to end up being progressively aware of and included, as episodic proof has appeared. In one of the most exceptional applications in a worldwide critical thinking field, epidemiologists are using citizen science to reinforce disease prevention and improve public health surveillance. Thus, through crowdsourcing, health specialists can find out about parts of infection elements that are not open through customary information, for example, contact examples and social condition, as governments at the Union and States in India are embarking on surveillance and contact tracing to counter COVID-19 episode.

Objectives and Methods

The study aimed at analyzing the prospect of crowdsourcing ventures to deal with the COVID-19 episode in India, the idea that was mooted. Integrative survey of scholarly writing on enrollment, determination, strategy and structure of chipping in framework [9] that incorporates the publicly supporting methodology studied remotely. The Google Play and the Apple app stores were searched using the terms ‘COVID-19’, ‘corona virus’, ‘pandemic’, and ‘epidemic’, individually. Additionally, a free-text search was run for COVID-19-related apps using the phrase ‘COVID-19 mobile apps in India’. Articles, study papers and media reports from news portals formed the secondary data sources of the study analyzed.