Facebook creates digital diagnostic test to help researchers study COVID-19

Facebook is working with Carnegie Mellon to ask its users about coronavirus symptoms. The initiative is part of the efforts that the American giant is using to fight the pandemic. A questionnaire will be launched on the social network, which will appear at the beginning of the News Feed. The idea is to make people voluntarily share information about their current health status.

The results of the surveys will be used to generate "insights that help the authorities to define plans to respond to the current health crisis". Facebook gives the heat maps by symptoms as one of the materials that will result from the collaboration of users and explains that these parts can help to detect outbreaks of contention that have yet to be identified.

tek facebook covid-19

The company also explains that Carnegie Mellon, responsible for developing the questionnaire, wrote questions that ask users specifically about their symptoms, to help alleviate hospitals where diagnostic tests are scarce.

Facebook claims that it is taking measures to protect the identity of the participants and stresses that it will not have access to the results of the inquiries answered. Note that researchers responsible for interpreting the data will also be unable to match responses to users.