In the business world, important decisions must be data-driven, and the same is true of the COVID-19 pandemic. As scientists work on a vaccine, a broad swath of data about carriers of the virus is needed to trace their potential contacts and keep hospital admissions at a manageable load. Recently, two Peoria natives stepped up to provide a local resource for the public.
The COVID-19 Local Tracker is a digital hub that displays confirmed cases, active cases, recovered cases, and deaths by county, state and the country—all updated in real time using data from Johns Hopkins and other sources. It’s the brainchild of Nathan Smith and Stephen Erke, co-owners of Peoria-based Falcon Laboratories.
Their flagship product, Readable Report, brings multiple sources of data together in one place to better inform decision-making. “Every platform that people rely on to understand their business—from sales data to social media engagement—has a separate dashboard and login,” says Smith. “Readable Report eliminates all of that by delivering automated and easy-to-understand reports via email.”
By harnessing the same data engine, Smith and Erke were able to quickly build the COVID-19 Local Tracker. “It’s helpful to have a single website to see what’s happening in your community with COVID-19,” Erke suggests. “We were able to use the data engine we’ve built to collect and distill relevant data at the county level.”
“We wanted to help in whatever small way possible,” Smith explains. “The goal was to give people the ability to easily see COVID-19 data and news specific to their area—because every state, county and city are drastically different.”
Covidcards.us was built as the next step, he adds, allowing anyone to generate a sharable COVID-19 stats card for any county in the country. The COVID-19 Local Tracker is available online at covid19.readable.report. PM
- Log in to post comments
