STAFF REPORTER
Researchers at the National Centre of Robotics and Automation (NCRA), NUST College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering (CEME), have developed a bilingual (Urdu and English) screening app, enabling Pakistanis to self-screen for COVID-19. This initiative is the part of the tangible contributions being made by NUST to help the Government steer the country through the COVID-19 outbreak. This would be the world’s first Urdu app for Android, said a news release issued here. Developed at the NCRA’s Robot Design and Development (RDD) Lab, the app, named COVID CHECK PAKISTAN, has been used for over 8000 screenings (and counting) in 9 different countries, including US, UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia, within the first 2 days of its beta rollout on March 23, 2020. The app enables citizens to screen for COVID-19, while staying at home, and not putting themselves and others at risk by going to hospitals. The app is available at http://ncra.org.pk/covid/. The screening app is one of the indigenous products NUST has developed to counter the pandemic, which were put on display during the visit of Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, to NUST on April 2. Other projects demonstrated during the Minister’s visit include tele-operated robot and aerial spraying drone for decontamination of spaces, robust and cost-effective PCR-based testing kits for detection of Coronavirus, high-quality sanitizers for microbial control (produced as per revised guidelines of World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention USA), and ventilator systems for short-term stabilization of COVID-19 patients (as per design specifications specially issued for combatting COVID-19 by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulator Agency UK).
