Data for Good in the Fight Against COVID-19
Blog: The Tibco Blog
Reading Time: 3 minutes
More than any other time in recent memory, we are seeing the private sector step up to make a difference. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, companies have taken action to retain their workforces, extend benefits, and support those who are quarantined. Some have donated money or protective equipment to frontline healthcare workers and local nonprofits. At TIBCO, our response includes all of these elements plus one more: leveraging our core competency in software and data to make predictive tools about the pandemic available to all who need them.
For 20 years, TIBCO has helped solve complex data challenges for companies and organizations globally. I’m a huge believer in the power of the #Data4Good movement, and TIBCO has a history of engaging in social issues through data-driven insight. Our data scientists have tackled problems as diverse as the San Francisco area’s housing crisis to how local authorities in South Africa can prevent the poaching of endangered species. COVID-19 presents our greatest challenge – and opportunity – to use data for good.
Here’s a screenshot of one of our dashboards. It’s part of our suite of data visualizations that provide valuable insights about the progress of COVID-19 to partners:
In March, we dedicated significant resources to gather, analyze, visualize, and publish comprehensive data tools tracking the outbreak and response. Early in the pandemic, our data team built a hub of visual and predictive analytics based on trusted, publicly available sources, along with local and county-level data. It is all available at TIBCO.com/covid19 – a data-fueled and thoughtful exploration of the coronavirus pandemic and what is being done about it.
Our goal is to understand the outbreak in real time at a community level, and assess the effects of non-pharmaceutical social interventions. Our tools offer guidance for resource planning, along with economic and supply chain considerations for healthcare facilities across the world. To be clear, we aren’t a team of epidemiologists. We are data scientists and technologists providing a service that helps empower public health officials through actionable insights and information. In the hands of governments, health institutions, researchers, and others on the frontline of the pandemic, these tools are helping to predict the effects of interventions and track viral recoveries in real time.
This data is critical in planning how and when we reopen our communities and restart our economy.
What’s inspiring to me is how much this exercise has galvanized our team. They’ve always been highly motivated and this event has built even stronger bonds – an important development, especially when we are all home working remotely.
I’m also inspired that we’re not alone. Many companies – big and small – are putting their core capabilities to work in service of pandemic response. In some cases, people, products, and innovation can be businesses’ greatest contribution. For example, Mercedes AMG helped develop breathing aids that were deployed to COVID-19 patients in the UK. Change Healthcare has developed an analytical tool that gives hospitals a centralized place to visualize a range of data types and to model various scenarios impacting clinical, financial, and operational aspects of healthcare organizations.
Providing our online dashboard tools at no cost was an easy decision for us. We invite partners to use our tools at TIBCO.com. We’re making them available to everyone online and are partnering more deeply with governments and institutions responding to this crisis. If you think these tools can help in new ways, let us know. This is a defining moment in our lives, and it is also a defining moment for businesses to step up and lead. I’m inspired by the steps so many have taken – and we’re ready to keep going, together.
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