The Times of India
April 2, 2020

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has prepared a data science-based tool to make easy the task of tracking the movements of Covid-19 patients or quarantined people across the country.

C-DAC, in association with the Indian Council for Medical Research and Union department of telecommunications, will deploy the platform after its launch on Thursday. “The system has been named National Analytical Platform for Dealing with Intelligent Tracing, Tracking and Containment (NAADI). It has many features that would be helpful for the administrators, decision makers, health workers and common citizens,” C-DAC director general Hemant Darbari said..

“The tool will also facilitate culling out the correct information from the confirmed or suspected patients, who might have genuinely forgotten the places they had visited during the two-three weeks before being diagnosed with the infection or quarantined. Some people may hide such facts fearing that they may be ostracized by society. Besides, some people may simply refuse to voluntarily divulge information,” Darbari said.

The information generated by the tool would be accurate up to a metre and would be of much help for the medical professionals, law enforcement agencies and data scientists. An expert of artificial intelligence with over three decades of experience, Darbari said the health officials or other agencies would receive proactive alerts from the tool about Covid-19 affected people even after their discharge on recovery. “Pandemics can create huge challenges for the government and public health officials to gather information and coordinate for a prompt response. In such a situation, artificial intelligence can play a huge role in predicting, minimising and stalling virus spread,” he said.

The development of this tool is among the several projects undertaken by C-DAC under Supercomputer using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Healthcare Analytics based Research, Covid-19 (SAMHAR). The SAMHAR project is in partnership with the National Supercomputing Mission established in association with startups and industries to build a rapid supercomputing system and research community for India to fight Covid-19.