CoSMoS: UM develops app to monitor suspected Covid-19 patients

A group of researchers at Universiti Malaya (UM) has developed the Covid Symptom Monitoring System (CoSMoS) to help medical staff monitor patients suspected of Covid-19 infection.

The university said the system has already been used at the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) to monitor individuals suspected of having contracted Covid-19 and those in home quarantine, and is expected to also be of use in monitoring medical teams exposed to Covid-19 patients.

“Currently, a large number of medical staff monitor these patients by making routine calls to them or visiting them at home.

“Through the CoSMoS application, the monitoring process will be automated and patients can insert their daily symptoms into CoSMoS, which would be transmitted to the CoSMoS primary system at UMMC where doctors can access real-time information through dashboards, ” the university said in a statement Friday (April 24).

Through this system, it said, medical staff would have have to make calls to only 10 percent of patients in need of supervision, while the rest could be monitored through CoSMoS, thus allowing 80-90 percent of medical staff to perform other tasks such as contact tracing and screening.

Infectious diseases specialist Datuk Prof Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman, who is also chairman of the UMMC Covid-19 Working Group, said CoSMoS would change the management of patients suspected of being infected with Covid-19 who are quarantined at home.

“Currently, the healthcare system is under such high pressure with a medical officer having to spend 10-15 minutes daily calling patients, and monitoring patients over 14 days, ” she said.

Dr Adeeba, who is also the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at UM, said that through the system, medical staff at UMMC would no longer have to make phone calls manually to patients.

“CoSMoS also leverages existing technology to make it accessible to the majority of the community, ” she added.

She said currently, CoSMoS – developed in eight days through a collaboration with Malaysian researchers in various countries – is still undergoing pilot testing at UMMC but has already received approval from the university’s Medical Research Ethics Committee.

“All patients using CoSMoS have given their consent for their data to be used for clinical research and monitoring purposes, ” she added,

Meanwhile, Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology at UM, Datin Prof Dr Sameem Abdul Kareem, said CoSMoS is 100 percent produced by UM using a public messaging engine, artificial intelligence and web technology.

It was developed by a team of Malaysian computer scientists at the faculty. – Bernama