Microsoft is pledging $20 million to support COVID-19 data and research initiatives from institutions including University of Washington School of Medicine and the Washington State Department of Health, according to an April 9 company blog post.
The tech giant is focusing its AI for Health program on helping institutions on the front lines of COVID-19 research. These organizations and their respective projects include:
1. University of Washington Department of Medicine's sepsis center is using clinical data, radiologic imaging and other patient biomarker responses to develop new algorithms to predict and improve healthcare and socioeconomic outcomes of COVID-19 patients.
2. UW School of Medicine's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is rolling out a set of COVID-19 data visualizations and predictions that the White House, FEMA, governors and hospital administrators have started using to deploy resources.
3. Washington State Department of Health is working on a new dashboard that uses data reported by local health jurisdictions, healthcare facilities and labs to increase the accuracy and speed of COVID-19 data reporting to the public.
Microsoft will also use the $20 million to support the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's COVID-19 computing consortium, Brazilian chatbot developer called Take, and Folding@home, an organization that uses distributed computing to research COVID-19 proteins that could help with designing therapeutics.