As the tech industry looks for innovative ways to aid public health efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft on Monday announced new features in its Bing COVID-19 to monitor the spread by notifying people when they’ve been exposed to the virus.
In integration includes Apollo Hospital’s bot for self-assessment and a hub for telemedicine support from reputed healthcare organizations.
The tracker will also offer content in nine Indian languages to provide people across the country access to critical information related to the pandemic in preferred language, the company said in a statement.
“The Telemedicine support hub offers options for online consultation with leading healthcare service providers in India like Apollo Hospitals, Practo, 1mg, and Mfine, among others,” said Microsoft.
Credible telemedicine providers can join the hub and undergoing an assessment process.
The Bing COVID-19 Tracker allows users to track novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections across the globe and in India at a hyperlocal level. Users can get statistics on infection, recoveries and fatalities in their own states and districts.
They can also save locations of their near and dear ones to quickly view stats of those areas at one place. “The Tracker provides authentic information on helpline numbers and testing centers as well as guidance and advisories from credible sources, including those from the Government of India, ICMR and WHO,” said Microsoft.
Bing’s COVID-19 Tracker now supports Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, and Kannada.