#tech4covid19 Impact Report | Week 5 | 18.04.2020

6 min readApr 19, 2020

Five weeks ago, most of the top startups in Portugal united to fight the new Coronavirus outbreak together.

This movement, now called #tech4covid19 (more details about it here: www.tech4covid19.org), has already more than 5250 volunteers (+150 since last week (SLW)) working on 67 initiatives (31 solid projects (+1 SLW) and 36 ideas under development (+4 SLW)) to beat the virus and the associated economic crisis.

There are already a large number of initiatives launched to the public generating real value to society.

Here you can find the impact reports from previous weeks:

And here you can find a new one for this week:

1) Rooms Against Covid (www.roomsagainstcovid.com)

A booking engine to allow health professionals to book free hotel/airbnb rooms, so they can keep their families safe when they need to rest. There are already 3579 rooms available in the platform (+1521 SLW) and 550 matches done (+56 SLW), representing 6009 nights booked (+1499 SLW) / 2541 nights already used (+1171 SLW).

2) Covidografia (www.covidografia.pt)

A crowd sourced app to track the epidemic evolution, allowing the public entities to see how the virus is spreading. It was officially launched two weeks ago, having already 61.437 users registered (+3.116 SLW). Register, use it and spread the word now.

3) Crowdfunding to buy hospital supplies (www.stopcovid19.pt)

A very successful crowdfunding campaign to buy supplies in shortage on healthcare centers. The initial objective of raising 100.000€ was crushed within the first days, leading to a stretch goal of 185.000€ to buy additional material. The campaign was closed on 03.04.2020 with an outstanding result: 6428 people donated 210.335€ (thank you!).

With that money we already bought 106.000 masks FFP2, 2.168 masks FFP1 and 2.168 glasses. 6.000 masks FFP2, 2.168 masks FFP1 and 2.168 glasses were already delivered to the following hospitals: Santa Maria, Garcia de Orta and São João. The remaining 100.000 masks FFP2 are already waiting for the air transfer (coming from China).

4) Solidarity Auction to buy hospital supplies (www.esolidar.com/npo/detail/1484-stopcovid-19-tech4covid19/)

The artist Carolina Piteira, the Portuguese Football League and the Rock in Rio festival got together to auction 13 amazing items. The sum of the winning bids led to 11.122€ (+110 SLW) being donated to the #tech4covid19 movement to buy hospital supplies.

Now, there are a second campaign going on to auction 4 guitars signed by Captain Fausto, Manel Cruz, Blaya and Carlão. If you are into rock ’n’ roll check out the website and bid for your next guitar :)

5) Hospital Supplies

There are many projects running in parallel on this front: a) one team managing the procurement / purchase of new items, b) many teams producing locally new items, c) one team collecting donations and d) another team managing logistics to deliver everything fast. The current accumulated outcome already delivered to the health system is:

170.000 gloves (+20.000 SLW)
16.168 surgical masks (8.168 masks via crowdfunding)
14.000 shoe covers
5.000 surgical caps
2.168 glasses (2.168 glasses via crowdfunding)
120 liters of alcohol

Most of those items were donated by institutions like a) Liga Portuguesa Contra o Cancro (Núcleo Regional do Sul), b) Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, c) Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica and d) Centro de Investigação Ciências da Saúde da Universidade da Beira Interior. Thank you!

This week we secured a new purchase of 3.000 jumpsuits and 2.187 surgical gowns that will be delivered within 10 days to the ARS Center.

Many more supplies are being produced, donated or purchased as we speak. More news soon.

6) Online Medical Appointments

The startups Better Now, KNOK Healthcare, Zaask and the new project acalma.online gathered hundreds of health professionals to provide free online consultation on their platforms.

6.1) 325 free video-calls (+58 SLW) were provided by the 34 doctors using the KNOK Healthcare (www.knokcare.com) platform.

6.2) There were 6291 interaction with the chatbot provided by the Zaask (www.zaask.pt/coronavirus) platform. 1824 of those users showed covid19 symptoms leading to 894 free consultations provided by the 32 doctors registered in the platform.

6.3) The 91 psychologists (+29 SLW) available in the acalma.online platform made 131 free consultations (+83 SLW), out of 286 already booked (+139 SLW).

7) Homemed (www.homemed.pt)

In order to ensure your safety and comfort during the Covid-19 pandemic, the startup Homemed, in partnership with Senhas .pt, allows you to book your medicines online and collect them at the pharmacy at the time that is most convenient for you. There are already 6 pharmacies available (79 waiting for approval) and 23 purchases completed (+4 SLW).

8) Wemoveit (www.wemoveit.pt)

If you need do move any kind of object from one location to other, the volunteers behind the wemoveit project can do it for you. So far the 43 “movers” available in the platform made 65 delivers (+13 SLW) including the transportation of food boxes for solidarity projects, hospital materials and plenty of peer-to-peer boxes.

9) Posso ir? App | Can I go? App (www.posso-ir.com)

A “wisdom of the crowds”-based app to know if there is a long, small or no line in the supermarket or pharmacy that you want/need to go, so unwanted / unnecessary crowd gatherings can be avoided.

The app was launched two weeks ago and there are already 90.000+ downloads/users (+36.600 SLW), 9201 locations listed (+16 SLW) and 18.000+ data reports (+4.000 SLW). The more the merrier, so join the crowd, share the word to your friends and share occupancy information every time you visit a supermarket or pharmacy.

10) Student Keep (www.studentkeep.org)

Students who do not have access to computers and / or the internet are unable to follow the online school activities currently proposed by teachers who try to teach at a distance. This project aims to promote and coordinate a sponsorship system, through which individual or corporate persons become Keepers, providing temporary or permanent computer equipment to students.

The project was launched this week and has already 510 requests by students in need (+130 SLW), 140 keepers willing to provide equipment (+80 SLW) and 12 matches already made.

11) Preserve (www.preserve.pt)

A marketplace to allow local business like restaurants, hair dressers, and more to sell vouchers to be redeemed after the crisis. This simple measure aims to inject cash in local businesses helping them survive. It was launched 3 days ago, but we already sold 168 vouchers (+115 SLW) representing 4.609€ delivered (+2.366€ SLW) to some of the 363 local businesses registered (+185 SLW).

This week the Preserve team announced a partnership with the Super Bock Group (www.superbockgroup.com) to launch a sub-website (Bock in Business | bockinbusiness.preserve.pt) specifically designed to support bars, coffee shops and restaurants from the Super Bock network. For every 10€ purchased through the platform, Super Bock will add another 5€.

12) TeamLoan (www.teamloan.pt)

A marketplace where commercial businesses can exchange / lend team members temporarily, in order to channel capacity to businesses with more demand in this context, minimizing unemployment and helping local businesses. It still in soft-launch but there are already 100 businesses pre-registered (+10 SLW).

13) Tools for Doctors

The “Scientific Information to Support Physicians” project (www.icam.org.pt) and the TonicApp startup (www.tonicapp.com) are providing scientific data and tools for doctors. The ICAM project team already reviewed and published 99 scientific papers.

14) Tools4Edu, Animalar, Hackathon by Taikai, Covindex, Interajuda, Covid+Eu, Quietinho em Casa, Mobility 4 Healthcare and many other projects are also already available online, and many more will come.

Props also to the task forces working to support / enable all the projects in areas such as Talent sourcing/management, Marketing, Funding, Partners and Sponsorships, Legal, Project Management, DevOps and Government Relations.

Talking about partnerships, it’s important to highlight that 15+ companies and institutions like the AEP, AMEN.pt, AWS, Bytalk, CTT, Dominios.pt, DNS.pt, Google, Mailchimp, McDonalds, Microsoft, NOS, Portuguese Nurses’ Order, Portuguese Pharmacists’ Order, Slack, Superbock, TypeForm, Uber, and many others already joined the movement as partners or supporters. Thank you!

I couldn’t not be prouder of all the work the volunteers are doing, but it’s not (yet) time to say our job is done. There are so much more to do it. There are many more lives to impact.

Let’s keep finding solutions faster than the virus spreads.

Let’s keep fighting together to beat this virus.

#tech4covid19

#tech4covid19 Impact Report | Week 5 | 18.04.2020

Written by Felipe Ávila da Costa