Virtue Foundation Launches Healthcare Facility Search Tool and COVID-19 Statistics
The Virtue Foundation Data Mapping Initiative is a forward-thinking technology platform that seeks to create a more efficient marketplace for the delivery of healthcare in under-served regions of the world. Born from years of on the ground medical missions, the project seeks to use predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms to analyze geospatial data, infrastructure, risk factors, and other environmental conditions to better predict need and match available resources.
In time, Virtue Foundation hopes to synthesize all of its data to build a simple user interface to provide individuals, non-profits, and governments with efficient access to the data needed to help make critical decisions on how to most efficiently allocate resources for greatest impact and to promote development, especially in the areas of health.
As the Virtue Foundation Data Mapping team continues to develop this platform, our team of statisticians and data scientists took some of the information they have gathered thus far to construct a usable map of confirmed healthcare facilities in 24 low-income countries. This data is important to map in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which is predicted to disproportionately affect these poorer countries already suffering from fragile healthcare systems. Mapping the hospitals and clinics in these low-income countries allows easy identification of those healthcare facilities best poised to support vulnerable populations seeking immediate care from the coronavirus, better visualization of hospitals locations in relation to population centers and better prediction of where resources and aid should be targeted by NGOs and governments to improve capacity and capabilities in those facilities most able to save vulnerable lives in their country.
The second feature of this mapping tool incorporates the most up-to-date COVID-19 statistics, starting with 24 low-income countries. Virtue Foundation hopes that this tool highlights the trajectory and trends of the pandemic in these countries, to ensure these areas of the world remain visible and not forgotten.
