#tech4covid19 Impact Report | Week 6 | 25.04.2020

7 min readApr 26, 2020

Six 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 5360 volunteers (+110 since last week (SLW)) working on 70 initiatives (34 solid projects (+3 SLW) and 36 ideas under development (+0 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 3938 rooms available in the platform (+359 SLW) and 581 matches done (+31 SLW), representing 7439 nights booked (+1430 SLW) / 3724 nights already used (+1183 SLW) / 53 full professional cleaning services provided.

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 has already 63.241 users registered (+1.804 SLW), but we need many more to multiply its impact. 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, 2.168 glasses, 3.000 jumpsuits and 2.187 surgical gowns. 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 3.000 jumpsuits and 2.187 surgical gowns will be delivered next week to ARS Center, and the remaining 100.000 masks FFP2 are still 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€ 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!

Last week we secured a new order of 90.000 FFP2 masks and we will be delivering next week more 3.000 jumpsuits and 2.187 surgical gowns 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 98 psychologists (+7 SLW) available in the acalma.online platform made 229 free consultations (+98 SLW), out of 451 already booked (+165 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.

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 51 “movers” available (+8 SLW) in the platform made 82 deliveries (+17 SLW) including the transportation of 200 meals for families in need, boxes for solidarity projects, hospital materials and plenty of peer-to-peer packages.

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 has already 93.880 downloads/users (+3.880 SLW), 65.489 locations listed (+56.288 SLW due to the recent launch in Spain (puedo-ir.es) and Slovakia (necakajvrade.com)) and 22.0422 data reports (+4.422 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 two weeks ago and has already 580 individual keepers (+440 SLW), 40 company keepers, 114 IT volunteers available to do any necessary refurbishments in the equipment donated, 780 requests by students in need (+270 SLW). 83 equipment were already delivered to students/schools (+71 SLW) with another 620 equipment being in transit or waiting refurbishment.

Last week the project partnered with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Bank Santander Consumer Finance to produce the following TV announcement that is now promoting the initiative:

The project also partnered with Vasco Vieira de Almeida Foundation, GRACE, BCSD, EDP and Primavera BSS.

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. We already sold 1195 vouchers (+1027 SLW) representing 25.771€ delivered (+21.162€ SLW) to some of the 937 local businesses registered (+574 SLW).

This week, the Preserve team has launched two top notch partnerships: the first with L’Oreal (loreal.preserve.pt) and the second with Super bock (bockinbusiness.preserve.pt) and is preparing a handful of other partnerships of the kind, showing the nationwide wave of solidarity from both individuals, but also businesses helping each other.

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 was launched in the end of this week having already 120 businesses pre-registered (+20 SLW), 7 businesses formally registered, 3 teams available for hiring representing 8 people.

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 123 scientific papers (+24 SLW).

14) Tools4Edu, Animalar, Hackathon by Taikai, Covindex, Interajuda, Covid+Eu, Quietinho em Casa, Mobility 4 Healthcare, Industrycare, naFila 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 6 | 25.04.2020

Written by Felipe Ávila da Costa

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