Let’s collaborate to make the Covid-19 triage website available nationally without delay

The mission is to relieve hospitals from handling testing for non-urgent, symptomatic patients who would be better off getting a drive-through test where exposure to others is reduced. Finding the nearest drive through testing site when sick should be easy and not require you to identify yourself or disclose sensitive personal health information to receive that information. Equally, more could be done to reassure non-symptomatic people in order to discourage them from lining up at these sites unnecessarily, getting turned away and potentially even catching COVID19 by not staying home. There are also potentially many features the site could offer such as scheduling and real time status tracking of drive thru sites that will help increase efficiency and relieve pressure at the drive-through sites.

Since the government already announced it but Google won’t do it, let’s leverage the supposed talent in Silicon Valley to create the website that should exist for the entire nation to filter people who need testing and direct them to the nearest test site. It can’t be that hard?! I’m a neuroscientist by training who only recently got into software engineering so I’m gonna need help from people in the medical field, website development, databasing, security and legal. I must be missing other topics/considerations so to the experts out there, please let me know what they are (see Contact). Since I’m not an expert in several of these areas, I’d prefer if the experts would volunteer and coordinate those parts. Happy to hear from the public companies running the tests on what they’d like to see in terms of coordinating people prior to them turning up.

If every Bay Area software engineer volunteered one hour each and collaborated on this (rather than buying toilet paper), it will be up and running in no time. If the rest of the global talent contribute, it could be world wide end of the month. Let’s forget the profit motive here and make this free with zero ads and no keeping data to sell.

Features I feel should be possible but needs proper planning

• [X] Symptom filter - following expect medical advice to help people decide if they need the test (Needs some reputable organisations to curate and endorse - can CDC/Stanford Medicine step in here?).

• [X] Map of testing sites - live map where directions to nearest two/three sites are (can Google maps/Apple maps/Tesla engineers step in here?). Should we use IP address of client or have people submit their zipcode? Could we ask Google to sponsor the use of Google Maps API?

• [X] new Testing site collator - a form where the general public and companies (CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Target etc…) can submit the location/times of operation of the testing sites as they discover them or come online respectively. Perhaps submit photos so people know where to go? How do we prevent submission of incorrect information? Say 5 people saying the same location => verified? Should I provide an optional field for people’s names so I can put them on a wall of fame to feel proud of helping make the website better?

• [ ] Live busy-ness scale. Some way for the general public to say they are in line at a specific site and check in time of arrival and how many cars are in front so that there is live info on how busy it is so that others can choose a less busy alternative site (if there is one). Kinda like Google Maps results have bar charts of whether a store is currently busy by the hour. Any ideas how to do that in the Google Maps pin pop out window? Would enough people even submit data to make the feature worthwhile?
• [ ] Multi-language support. Need multilingual volunteers to produce natural sounding translations of website text.
• [ ] Voting/rating/feedback system. In order to classify existing sites, we could have some kinda voting system when people have visited the site to rate the site for waiting time, whether they got served at all, whether it was free, how long it takes to get results etc… Ideally a volunteer from youtube, FB or twitter would know how to make such a feature.
• [ ] Scheduler. In order to increase efficiency at drive-through testing sites, an appointment system would likely be better than a free-for-all line of cars where many will go and be disappointed. Live inventory would help distribute people to sites of availability. However, this will require coordination to the various providers of tests so might not be realistic that they would sign up to a third party to handle scheduling. I would need an experienced volunteer to take on that feature.
• [Postponed] A method of communicating the results - here’s where I’m not sure how to do it. We should make it as anonymous a process as possible - but would a form to submit an email address for LabCorp/Quest to email you your result be a good idea? Perhaps people should submit contact details at the testing site itself rather than to the website. My view is the least data collected on the website visitor the better.

Other considerations?

• [ ] Info/data/graphics. Present graphs “the curve” of cases/deaths in relevant county (either auto by zipcode entered or selection from dropdown box) so people know how things are going in their own counties. This is probably done better on other website so is it better to focus on one task?
• [ ] Sign up for testing - should there be a step where after the symptom selection filter that you digitally confirm/sign (under perjury law?) that you do in fact have these symptoms (to prevent symptomless time-wasters). If you accept, then you could get a QR code that testing sites can scan to verify. This would reduce the load on the testing sites to filter the genuinely sick from those gaming the website to get a test.
• [ ] Authentication - should users need to login/register to use the site to prevent overloading? OAuth2? Not handling personal info is preferable.
• [ ] Tests for security - make sure the website is robust against attack (can Security engineers help design infrastructure, try and break it and submit fixes?)
• [ ] Reports to CDC/Federal government. How do people feel about reporting the website traffic (completely anonymized) to the government to give a sense of the infection rate in regions across the nation. This would require collecting IP addresses/zipcodes.
• [ ] iOS/Android version of the website? Does someone from Apple or Google want to take these on?
• [X] Bookmarklet for extracting latitude and longitude from url of Google Maps

Convoluted, but only way I found to achieve this

javascript:(function(){var body = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]; var hidden = document.createElement('textarea'); hidden.setAttribute('id','clipboard'); body.appendChild(hidden); document.getElementById('clipboard').value = window.location.href.split('@')[1].split(',')[0] + window.location.href.split('@')[1].split(',')[1]; document.getElementById('clipboard').select(); document.execCommand('copy');})();

Platform

• Language: I only have experience with NodeJS/Express. Can website experts comment on suitability for the website intended?
• Host: Digital Ocean (maybe the digitalOcean guys would waive hosting fees and donate the suitable bandwidth required for a nationwide website).
• Domain: Anyone want to donate a suitable domain they may be hoarding for no reason?
• Database: Firebase, MySQL or MongoDB? (could a database expert comment on this?)

Current progress

• 14mar2020 3.43pm: Just in planning phase. Hope to put together a mock webpage as a schematic of what I think will be of utility today.
• 15mar2020 1.10am: Basic prototype done on which need help to build further.
• 16mar2020 Aesthetic improvements and added real drive thru sites reported in the news.
• 17-24mar2020 Testing and adding news source drive thru sites throughout the US
• 25mar2020 Beta version live at https://www.testingforcovid.com
• 03apr2020 iOS lead developer found to produce companion iOS app
• 13apr2020 Beta testing finished. Website live. iOS app submitted to App Store pending review

Donations

• I don’t want any money for this; happy if people would just donate their time instead to help however they can. Perhaps donations welcome to offset cost of running the site, SSL certification, database servers and any unused go to a homeless charity. In fact, i’d ask if big tech companies would consider paying to host and maintain the website (take it off my hands as I already have a day job), waive API call fees (such as Google Maps API), and use their social media presence to spread the word once we know it works and is secure.

Contact

• Initially please message @louis_leung on twitter (I’ll open up DMs if required) if you are serious and want to volunteer or even help with coordination of the project.
• Either click on pin on map and follow link or email directly testingforcovid@gmail.com if you have updates for, or find errors in, the information of the sites on the map.
• We have a Slack workspace - email us at testingforcovid@gmail.com to get an invitation. In the email, tell us how you want to volunteer.
• Follow us on instagram/twitter @testingforcovid and on our Facebook page facebook.com/testingforcovid.

Press

• We were recently featured in the SFciti blog: https://sfciti.org/news/tech-tools-to-track-the-spread-of-covid-19-and-find-covid-19-testing-sites/