MIT Solve

Solution & Team Overview

Solution name:

MapSights

Short solution summary:

MapSights is a Decision Support System (DSS) for public health and pandemic management. It is one of a kind system which allows spatiotemporal visualization of on-ground operations on a webmap. It also allows users to draw data insights from current operations to identify challenges and to forecast impacts.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team based?

Panchkula, Haryana, India

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Aditya Sharma, Founder-CEO

Which Challenge Area does your solution most closely address?

Respond (Decrease transmission & spread), such as: Optimal preventive interventions & uptake maximization, Cutting through “infodemic” & enabling better response, Data-driven learnings for increased efficacy of interventions

What specific problem are you solving?

Data is the backbone for business processes across industries. Government programs were sluggish to change but have now realized its importance and within the past decade, have invested in data collection. However, complex utilization of the data for policy insights beyond simple derivations, is still lacking.

During CoVid pandemic, the speed and scale of implementation necessitated the application of technology and data processes. Government sought support from private sector for such expertise. We responded to this challenge, working on the niche segment of applying geospatial techniques to their datasets while developing systems for internal capacity building of the government, for future utilization as well.

While there's immense potential of deploying geospatial techniques for public health systems, doing it for govt systems has challenges since the data architecture is not designed with a foresight for final decision-making indicators.

The data is often non-digitized and lack standardization.
Absence of geo-coding & metadata protocols.
Continuous time-series data not maintained.
Data is heavily fragmented across departments and even separate ministries, based on their role in pandemic response.
Lack of scientifically rigorous analysis on viable data.

Our work aims to address these institutional challenges in India.

Who does your solution serve, and what needs of theirs does it address?

In the pilot phase with state of Haryana, the solution directly served almost three hundred thousand state personnel, while also indirectly serving 27.5 million state residents through its resultant impact of improved health systems & governance delivery.

This solution served the state and COVID control team: -

By giving a robust decision support to planners; with key data insights for disease tracking, infrastructure planning, vaccination rollout strategies, relief operations, mitigation strategies during public health emergencies including pandemics.
In context of the pandemic, it can also identify incidence clusters and their transient nature (emerging, intensifying or diminishing)
Also acts as information trove for epidemiological assessments, unearthing linkages between various attributes and the pandemic

After the first version of the application was developed, the CoVid situation evolved from tracking to treatment and the application was put on hold as the priority workflows changed. We are now repurposing the same for COVID vaccination operations as well.

We are engaged with state personnel, majority of whom have no background in tech or GIS, to understand their expectations. It shall eventually lead to a product that is intuitive and extremely user friendly, enabling people with varied tech capabilities to extract data insights from it.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Pilot: A project, initiative, venture, or organisation deploying its research, product, service, or business/policy model in at least one context or community