By Spy Uganda
Cyclops Defense System, a local security firm founded four years ago by Ugandan youth has developed a Tech.system that can track, record and report corona virus suspects in less than 10 minutes.
In an exclusive interview with our reporter on Monday morning at their head offices on Nviri Lane raod, Kololo Kampala, the company’s CEO Charles Alpha Karamagi said they developed the idea early February 2020 after learning that the Coronavirus which started in Wuhan China was steadily escalating into Africa and this woke them up to start thinking hard.
“We started thinking hard about how we can contribute towards the fight against the pandemic when the virus knocked on African doors, but more especially, the East African Community. As IT specialists we had to think of how we can be of relevance,” Karamagi said.
It’s a known fact that whereas Uganda has done extremely well in combating ‘in house’ infections and suffocating further spread, its efforts are being watered down by the regional truck drivers especially from Tanzania and Kenya who currently pose the biggest threat of spreading the disease.
Today, truck drivers are required to do tests at the borders and continue with their journeys as results take long to be available. Truck drivers are later on ‘hunted down’ once results prove positive, this is a tedious activity.
With this new Technology, a driver can be monitored and located at all times-24/7. All they need is to wear a wrist band on their hands which in turn relays changes in temperature, blood pulse, heartbeat, respiratory rate and geo-location in real time.
This data is collected in a centralized system called the Central Management System (CMS), connected on one’s wrest band and provided to authorities for analysis and action in minutes.
The company is a fully fledged innovation hab for IT software development, design, Data security and physical security services among others.
According to Karamagi, the region could solve the truck drivers’ dilemma that they’re currently grappling with by simply making use of this Technology which is still at a small cost of USD60 per gadget about shs222,000.
“We injected in about USD200,000 (about shs740,000,000/=) to develop both software and hardware system, and we have tested it amongst ourselves, it’s accurate and we believe it can help ministry of Health in combating the disease faster,” Karamagi said.
When asked about whether they had contacted the Health Ministry, the company’s public relations officer Makara Brighton said efforts were underway already, though they hadn’t got response by the time of this interview.. but were hopeful.
The system, if used will go along way in monitoring and tracking suspected truck drivers, general public, frontline workers such as health workers, security personnel and those in quarantine and isolation centers, with instant reports about their temperatures, locations, heart beats among others.
“We have frontline workers who get in contact with patients daily, they can contract the disease without their notice, this device will help them to monitor themselves as well,” Makara said.
Joshua Kasule, a software engineer with the company said, the new system would help health workers to know who needs attention in real-time.
