Our know-how contributing to the COVID-19 Task Force
Apptitude not only brought its know-how in the conception and design of the interface but also our experience in the development of complex matchmaking systems, which combined with the computational expertise of the EPFL – Blue Brain Project team allowed us to create a powerful and efficient “matchmaking” system to meet the needs of crisis management.
Resource requesters, such as hospitals and laboratories, add their demands in terms of equipment, consumables, supplies, knowledge or workforce.
Simultaneously, resource providers, such as universities or laboratories operating in other fields, provide information on their available materials. A team of trained moderators is responsible for conducting the correspondence in order to allocate critical resources as efficiently as possible.
Therefore, the key objectives of the mission were to :
- Design, develop and roll out a new ARC platform out as quickly as possible and be able to evolve it during the actual operation
- Allow diagnostic laboratories to declare needs with precise identification
- Allow Swiss academic groups to declare supplies responding to needs using a controlled vocabulary
- Allow Spiez Laboratory to sort out priorities of the requests and approve the most appropriate matches according to the curated situational awareness in Switzerland
An intuitive user experience
The user experience of the ARC platform was designed to be both intuitive from the first login, while remaining effective in everyday situations, even in stressful circumstances. In order to deliver the platform as quickly as possible, the design process took place in iteration loops of a few days each or even a few hours at a sustained work pace.
The design evolved on the basis of an interactive prototype in close collaboration with the respective project stakeholders. End-user representatives from the Swiss national COVID-19 Scientific Task Force were directly involved from the early stages of the design to ensure that a relevant and effective application was designed for their specific needs.
An open-source platform relevant beyond the current pandemic
The ARC platform’s open-source technology would allow rapid deployment to provide assistance in other countries affected by COVID-19. In particular, when searching for specialized resources such as key material assets, infrastructure availability, and university sector staff.
“The importance of the open source ARC Platform technology is that, it is not limited to its current use in Switzerland or, its use in the on-going COVID-19 crisis. It offers a way to respond to unconventional circumstances, in particular when the normal supply chain cannot be used”
Prof. Felix Schürmann, Director of Computing at EPFL – Blue Brain in Frontiers, Science News.
Since the platform is configurable with respect to actual roles and types of demands, its relevance easily extends beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic in order to assist with other types of emergencies such as natural disaster response scenarios.
Scientific publication in Frontiers, Public Health
The ARC platform is the subject of a scientific research article published in Frontiers in Public Health that you can explore using the links below:
Scientific article in Frontiers, Digital Public Health
“ARC: An Open Web-Platform for Request/Supply Matching for a Prioritized and Controlled COVID-19 Response”
Article in Frontiers, Science News blog
“COVID-19 crisis – a technology providing unconventional supply relief”
Article in EPFL News
“COVID-19 Crisis – A technology providing unconventional supply relief”