FRUCT developing services and apps to help citizens manage life under quarantine restrictions

What are we offering

• Our team starts development of a set of services and apps to help citizens manage life under quarantine restrictions. The first mobile app helps to form a shopping list of goods that the user (and family) might need during the quarantine time. The shopping list content and norms of goods are based on recommendations and advises issued by local authorities and produced by respected academic and media sources. The provided information will include references to the source and later we will allow the user to select which of the basic shopping list to take based on already processed trustable sources. By setting country and proving non-personalized information about the family size and members, the recommendation list will be automatically adjusted. Also user will be able to edit the list by adding new items (to ensure personal comfort) and adding comments to the listed goods (e.g., specify a brand). Finally the user will be able to register in the app all purchased goods. In addition the app will contain links to the main online shops operating in the selected regions. The main idea is to help preventing panic and give a user feeling of control that his/her family is prepared to live under quarantine.

• Another service will help to distribute load between the neighboring shops. The service is based on self-declarative principle of announcing visit. The user can use the service client to find out list of opened neighboring shops and check their declared load in the next hours, select the most suitable shop and “book a visit time”. This way people will share plans on when they want to visit shops that should help to balance load of the shops and minimize peak loads and unnecessary social contacts.

• Blood Pressure Diary https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fruct.yar.bloodpressurediary is the most popular public part of our solution for monitoring cardiovascular disease, which is the top risk group nowadays. Free version of the app contains all basic functional that is requested by physicians to help diagnostics. By the way, if you will get feedback from physicians asking to additionally open any of the additional paid functional as it is important for their work then we are ready to open the corresponding functional for free use at least till the end of epidemic.

The app is translated to more than 20 languages, but localization to some languages requires proof-reading and translation of the part of text related to the latest functional. We have a special tool to help us with translation https://yar.fruct.org/translate/projects/diaries/core-strings/. Of course contribution of the volunteers is appreciated by mentioning in the app and small tokens of appreciation.

Also we have a web system for processing and analyzing collected data. If some physicians would volunteer to try our monitoring system we are happy to open it free of charge, just ask to later provide us some comments/feedback on what can be improve for the future versions.

• An app to help people maintain normal physical activity during quarantine – Walky Doggy mobile app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fruct.yar.walkydoggy. This is a simple app that helps people to maintain at least minimal level of physical activity and follow routines, which could help to better deal with non-strict quarantine when it is allowed to stay outside, like we now in Finland and I suppose in many other places as well. Idea of the app that it stimulates required level of physical activity, but without social contacts.

• Also we are studying how our published apps for monitoring cardiovascular disease and temperature control could be best adopted to current needs. There are a few more ideas, but they are in too early stage to discuss.

What does this address?

Basically the above proposed solutions are small projects. These solutions help to address problems and demands that were identified by discussing with our friends in Italy and by analyzing what we are missing by ourselves. The basic functional of these apps and services is described above, plus a bit more could be found from the provided links. An important disclaimer – our main competences and majority of current solutions are targeted B2B market, so we have not so much to offer for the mass-user. We have team and want to help the situation and all you advices how to best address current needs of B2C market are very much appreciated. If somebody have relevant user studies to share or could provide any other feedback or input to help make the proposed ideas more useful for people we will very much appreciate. As a lot of things happen right now, If you know that somebody done or working on a similar solution please let us know.

What assistance do we need?

• If you have a good idea of what source of funding can be used to support this development it would be great. Development of the basic version of apps explained in 1.a is 14.6kE, the basic version of service 1.b is 20.4kE. Plus we reserve 2kE for equipment (need couple of new devices) and overhead costs (we have books-keeping on outsourcing + bank charges) + 5.9kE for creating further development plan and address other idea we currently have on the table. The total is 42.9kE. It is interesting even if a part of this amount could be covered.
  • We would appreciate help in localization to new languages and proof-reading of available translations of the eHealth apps using tool https://yar.fruct.org/translate/projects/diaries/core-strings/.
  • It would be great if you can help to promote of already developed and to be developed apps and services.
  • If you get requests from companies/authorities and plan to create consortia to develop new apps / services, please keep us in mind. We have large team of developers with multiple years of experience in front and back-end development and we are interested to join new projects that address current challenges.

Where can you find out more information

Our main web site is http://fructmd.com/. In addition the LBS/geo-location services team has own site www.fructs.com / www.geo2tag.com.