ATTRACT grantee Bio Nano Consulting develops software tool to map COVID-19 distribution

Bio Nano Consulting, a member of the AquAffirm Group, announces the introduction of the beta version of its advanced COVID-19 Outbreak Management Tool – a digital platform for mapping, modelling and managing the current coronavirus epidemic in the UK. Adapted from a GIS-enabled software mapping platform that has been in development for 18 months, this tool will help UK government healthcare officials, NHS directors, strategic planners and academic researchers to model, plan, prepare and act in real-time to manage the outbreak most effectively. The first version shows the cumulative number of confirmed coronavirus cases in real time for the 32 London boroughs; the link is: www.CORONA19.uk. Future versions will shortly provide the same information for the rest of the UK.

The software tool will in time provide decision support across a range of areas of importance in managing the current outbreak, including:

• Epidemiological mapping for strategic planning – Facilitating real-time geospatial mapping of confirmed positive cases at the county/borough level in the first instance, to enable strategic modelling of quarantine strategies, blanket testing strategies, and hot-spot identification as a function of time. This facility will in time be expanded to incorporate geospatial mapping of all test results (both positive and negative) to provide improved understanding of the rate of epidemiological spread and eventually, the rate of epidemiological decay.
• Critical care capacity management – Working with NHS-sourced data to provide real-time analytics to facilitate bed and critical care capacity management, at first across the public healthcare network and eventually to include the private healthcare network as well, with a particular emphasis on real-time ventilator capacity.
• Critical resource mapping and management – Working with public health officials to provide central mapping and coordination for managing availability and distribution of critical resources such as oxygen, COVID-19 test kits (viral load and, once launched, antibody) and anti-viral therapeutics (once available) across the healthcare network.

Key features of the COVID-19 Outbreak Management Tool include:

• Cross-platform usability – The digital platform has been designed to be cross-platform (running on Windows, Mac, iPad and iPhone) and uses a next generation graphic user interface (GUI), state-of-the-art mapping algorithms for managing and rendering GIS data and a library of optimisation algorithms for addressing a modeller’s’ needs.
• Adaptability – The software is highly adaptable and the development team highly skilled at developing new features upon request.

To find out more visit: www.bio-nano-consulting.com.

About Bio Nano Consulting
Bio Nano Consulting (BNC) is a best-in-class technology and strategic consultancy focusing at the interface
between bio-, nano- and digital technologies, providing project management, product development and
strategic consultancy to a range of international clients from industry, academia and government. BNC is a
wholly owned subsidiary of AquAffirm Ltd.

About AquAffirm
AquAffirm is a London-based product development company commercialising technologies to address
global biomedical and environmental issues. Offering both hardware and digital solutions, the company is
focused on tackling some of the world’s most intractable problems. With a world class board comprising a
PowderJect co-founder (Dr David Sarphie, CEO), a co-inventor of the blood glucose test (Prof Tony Cass of
Imperial College), a world-renowned microwave engineer and physicist (Prof Gabriel Aeppli FRS of ETH in
Switzerland) and an internationally-recognised former director of large UK laboratories (Prof John Wood
FREng), AquAffirm is a leader in developing advanced technology solutions.

For more information, please contact Dr David Sarphie on +44 (0)7771 802145 or
e-mail: [email protected]