If you’re not a doctor, scientist, or medical researcher, it doesn’t mean that you can’t help fight the COVID-19 virus. Simply staying at home to help flatten the curve is already a contribution towards society, but if you want to be more active in lending a helping hand, researchers at UC San Francisco could use your help.The university has launched a new program called the COVID-19 Citizen Science (CCS) that basically uses crowdsourced data to help them better understand the virus and to track it, which could come in handy when coming up with treatment options as well as to contain it. This program is open to everyone all over the world as long as they are aged 18 and above and own a smartphone.
So how does this work? Through a smartphone app, users will be prompted to answer questions about their health and daily habits. They will also be prompted with new questions every week over the course of the next six months. There is also an option to allow the app to track you, and the good news is that this is an opt-in feature, so if you’d rather not be tracked, you can choose no to enable the feature.
According to UCSF, “In the long term, the collective participation of committed individuals in CCS will help identify behaviors, influences and factors that increase or decrease the risk of infection or that affect outcomes after infection. The greater the number of participants, the greater the likelihood of statistically valid findings emerging from the study.”
If you’re interested in taking part in this program, head on over to UCSF’s website in the source link below for the details.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Health and Privacy. Source: ucsf.edu