Public Health & Well-Being
The Challenge
Increasing number of population and its density in mega cities, unprecedented people mobility facilitated by modern transportation systems, and fast growing goods exchange brought by global trade leave our society as a vulnerable target to public health emergencies. In a 2015 TED talk, Bill Gates said “The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola”. The statement unfortunately was prophetic when corona virus disease outbreak (COVID-19) became a pandemic in 2020. The war between mankind and public health threats will be long. Technology must help humanitarian forces on three fronts. One is preventive education which disseminating scientific knowledge efficiently about diseases, especially for children. The other is the simulations being conducted before and during the progress of events that harm public health and other well-being. Last but not least, the accelerations of information technology applications for health care, such as AI-assisted diagnostics, super computing for pharmaceutic solutions,etc.
Our Solution
Partnering with interdisciplinary colleagues on medical, social and pedagogical fields, we work hard on turning knowledge about public health and well-being threats into new media contents like serious games. Such contents are intuitive, interactive, easy to distribute, and measurable on educational outcomes.Using the models built with our efforts in smart urban planning, we conduct simulations of public health emergencies in cities with results obtained in hours and days, rather than weeks and months.Combining visualization with simulation，data is no longer abstract numbers but can be comprehended by general public. Graphical visualization also makes it possible for performing visual analysis in crowd sourced manner, greatly increasing comprehensiveness and efficiency of the results-conclusion-action process.Our discussion forums and sharing events bring health care professionals and scientists together, inspiring new ideas and solutions for public health and well-being.
Differences made by us
Milestones
A serious game on prevention of COVID-19 virus is made and distributed in multiple languages and regions.
Impacts
Tens of thousands of general public downloaded our educational materials in interactive media, and benefited from learning related knowledge.
In the News
The IEEE Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology (IEEE SIGHT) endorsed and publicly praised our work.