Page 12 - Informatics, July 2020

IN FOCUS

RT-PCR App

NIC’s Mobile Application for Containment and Monitoring Covid-19 pandemic
across the Country.

ovid-19 pandemic in India is part of the
worldwide situation of coronavirus dis- Sample Collectors Sample Collection ICMR ICMR
ease and a large number of people is like- RT-PCR RATI Collectors Centres Laboratories Laboratories
Cly to be affected by the coronavirus. The App App
country has imposed initial lock-downs, supple- Internet
mented by increased testing of people and con-
tact tracing of patients as effective measures in
its fight against Covid19. The United Nations and Admin Domain Controllers
Each DB group contains Primary and Secondary DB Server (MS SQL Server
World Health Organization have praised India’s
response to the pandemic as ‘Comprehensive
and robust’, for containing the spread and build- Web API https://covid19cc.nic.in
ing necessary healthcare infrastructure.

Why RT-PCR: Increasing Number
of Covid19 Tests Web Application Servers (Windows Server 2016, IIS 10.0)
Consolidation DB
With just 13 ICMR authorized Laboratories 2019 Enterprise Edition). Similar setup for DR site has been established.
for testing of Reverse transcription-polymerase
chain reaction (RT-PCR) samples in the first week
of February 2020, India now has more than 900 File System Server Performance Monitoring
laboratories to meet the increased test load
which crossed 1 lakh samples per day by end May
2020. A large number of tests has necessitated
that correct patient identification, location and
other data are captured during the sample taking Eastern Region DB Western Region DB Northern Region DB Southern Region DB
the stage and this data is available for test re-
sult entry in ICMR authorized laboratories before
the samples physically reach these labs. Quite ficult circumstances during the first fortnight ensure that the correct mobile number of patient
a few asymptomatic people are testing positive of April 2020. The NIC Himachal Pradesh State is available along with location codes (Lat/Long)
for Covid-19 and another Rapid Antibody Test is Centre developed the two mobile applications, for contact tracing and identifying sensitive
being conducted, although in lesser numbers at namely RT-PCR and RATI, on Android and iOS zones. The data is immediately made available to
present, to detect Covid-19 patients. (Apple) platforms with an authorization portal the ICMR portal through which ICMR authorized
The delays in data entry, wrong data in Spec- https://covid19cc.nic.in in a very short span of laboratories can enter Test results against these
10 days.
imen Referral Forms (SRF) for RT-PCR tests, de-
lay in the entry of test results in Laboratories Considering the likely increase the number
were the reasons for Government’s decision to of tests to be conducted, the mobile apps and 31/36
quickly and correctly capture de- portal have been performance tested to meet a onboarded
States
tails of all Covid-19 related tests very high load of 50,000 concurrent users
by sample collectors in the fields. for the Apps and 20,000 concurrent users 33Lacs 915
RPCR
ICMR
This was important for the con- for the portal. Matching infrastructure was Specimen Authorised
R Forms
tainment of the Covid-19 pan- deployed in NIC Cloud set up in NDC Shas- Labs
demic by identifying patients tri Park, in New Delhi, by the NIC PFMS team
and isolating them before they and NIC HP team.
infect others. NIC was entrust- 86000 7215
Rapid
ed to develop the solution RT-PCR Mobile App Antibody Collection
Centres
and a dedicated team of of- The RT-PCR mobile app has been developed Tests 22Lacs
ficers working at different to collect data being captured in the Specimen Collectors
Sample
locations came up with the Referral Form of RT-PCR samples of Covid19 sus- Testers
solution, in extremely dif- pect patients in the country. The objective is to
12 informatics.nic.in Covid-19 Special Issue