We live in Italy, and as you probably know, we're in the middle of a COVID19 outbreak.
Last week, I was discussing with my boss the current status and how we could help to improve the situation. In the meantime, similar discussions happened with partners, doctors, and friends about what can to do to gain a better understanding of this disease and improve diagnosis techniques. We reached out to fellow teams at ValueChina, Looptribe, Nestore, and PoliMI. We found them with the same desire to contribute: there is much that can be done to support all the medical personnel fighting every day against COVID19.
In just a few days, we got in touch with as many doctors as we could, to ask them how we could help. Sooner, they came back to us with enthusiasm and outlined some ideas regarding medical imaging used to diagnose interstitial pneumonia.
Sooner after we decided to contribute our team expertise in this effort and every piece of technology that could be helpful, we figured out we should fight this battle together, sharing ideas, technology, and contributions.
Then in a matter of hours, the defeatcovid19 group was born and open to everyone willing to contribute.
Our goal is to share every bit of knowledge we'll build to help people either in Italy or other countries. All the results, datasets, and models are going to be released open source and published on our Github account. Everyone is encouraged to contribute and onboard new fellows in this battle. Companies that want to support the group offering access to their technology are welcome as well.
We're onboarding people and companies into this group (please share with anyone you think could help). We aim to be inclusive and supportive: this group grounds on the principle of sharing knowledge and resources between all the contributors.
In the meantime, we're discussing with many hospitals in Italy to build as many datasets as we can and offer them to everyone willing to analyze them.
We're going to promote a working track aroung covid diagnosys using medical images