Microsoft powers IoT company Gaia in the fight against coronavirus

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker is providing support to Gaia Smart Cities, a small Internet of Things company, to help citizens assess their health risk related to Covid-19. Gaia has built a platform which includes an app, using Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure that enables citizens to provide information about their health risk and help city administration track responses by Pincode to take preventive action. This data that the citizens feed about their symptoms, travel and contact history is stored in Azure, which then provides a real-time report about the daily situation as well as trends observed in the city. 

The Mumbai-based firm’s technology has been successfully tested in Agra and Gaia plans to scale up the platform in other parts of the country as well. Arun Prakash, CEO Agra Smart City and Ayukt, Agra Nagar Nigam, said this app will help the city identify high-risk individuals, get health teams to out to them with their permission, and through data analytics, see emerging location-based spread trends, if any, to be able to take prompt response action. "The Agra Smart City Control and Command Room has been converted into a war room in our fight against Corona in Agra district. This app helps citizens understand the critical symptoms and their risk factor, so that they can take preventive care or connect with medical practitioners as needed,” said Prakash.

Amrita Chowdhury, Director at Gaia said the company repurposed its smart feedback software platform to build ‘citizen home delivery locator platform, Citizen Covid19 Risk Self-Assessment app, and other digital enablers. She said these software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, powered by Microsoft Azure, are scalable, transportable, and rapidly deployable. These solutions leverage PIN code-based data so that targeted micro-location specific information can be collated or disseminated to best benefit citizens. 

“As a startup, we are humbled to be able to contribute to the fight against corona. Our committed Agra smart city program management team is working in the frontlines alongside Agra district administration to organize response measures, create food and supplies distribution linkages, enable digital medical centres and citizen helplines, and spread necessary information to citizens,” said Chowdhury. “It would be our privilege to extend this contribution to support other cities as well.”

Sangeeta Bavi, Director – Startups, Microsoft India, said that the company is committed to enabling governments, enterprises, startups as well as communities at scale, especially in these challenging times. “Our trusted and scalable cloud platform and technologies present a transformative opportunity for startups to innovate and build ground-breaking solutions that are helping the citizens of our country,” said Bavi. “We’re privileged to be able to make a difference to the community through Gaia’s Covid risk self-assessment app that can help with preventive care and support,” said Bavi.

Gaia was founded in 2015 by Sumit D. Chowdhury, a former top executive at IBM and Reliance and an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University. 

Till Friday afternoon, some 1,026,974 people worldwide had been infected by Covid-19, and around 53,975 had died, according to data by Johns Hopkins University. About 217,433 people had recovered. In India, 2,567 people had been infected by Covid-19, of which 72 had succumbed.