Israeli developers work on applications to track the spread of COVID-19, while the country’s largest hospital makes progress with telemedicine to protect the staff.

In Israel almost 10% of workers are employed in high technology, and the coronavirus pandemic has caused a flood of new technologies designed to stop transmission. The nonprofit Start-Up Nation Central has compiled a directory of about 70 Israeli technology companies developing responses to the new virus, which has infected more than 4,000 people in the country.

One application that stands out is Hamagen, (the Hebrew shield), launched earlier this month by the Ministry of Health. It is available for Android phones on Google Play and iPhone on App Store.

Using geolocation technology, the application informs users about any known contact cases of COVID-19. Available in five languages, Hamagen has been downloaded by over one million users.

“The application is a technological means designed to give each and every one of us the ability to know accurately and immediately if we were in contact with a person infected with coronavirus”, said the Ministry of Health in a statement when the application was installed.

Before, the Ministry had published the epidemiological history of patients with COVID-19, listing all the places that were contagious and advising those who were in any of the places at the same time to be quarantined for 14 days. However, as the number of diagnosed cases each day jumped to tens and then to hundreds, it quickly became impractical for the public to review all lists.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense has supported an Israeli startup called Vocalis Health, which is developing an application capable of diagnosing COVID-19 based on the sound of someone’s voice. “We are working all the time”, said Tal Wenderow, co-founder of the startup, in an interview to AFP.

Currently, voice samples are being collected from virus carriers at various stages of the disease and also samples from uninfected people, with the purpose of developing an artificial intelligence-based algorithm to detect COVID-19 vocal “fingerprint”.

Health professionals will be able to alert users in the early stages of the disease and use the application to monitor its spread throughout the population. The response from people willing to give voice samples was “overwhelming”, said Wenderow. In addition to helping contain new infections, the app can also allow patients to be monitored at home, he added.

* Text translated from The Times Of Israel website.