Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- KT, a top telecom company in South Korea, has unveiled an app for collecting research data that is needed for the development of a prediction model on infectious diseases such as COVID-19 by using mobile communication data, artificial intelligence and information and communications technology.

The app called "Study of Health Information for Next Epidemic (SHINE)" has been developed as part of a joint research project financed by the Bill & Melinda Foundation. It can inform the current status of infectious diseases around users and check the risk of infection by entering symptoms such as fever, headache, and cough. Data will be safely stored by applying blockchain.

KT has formed a consortium. A research team at Korea University College of Medine is in charge of operating a monitoring system and analyzing pathogen gene sequences. Mobile Doctor analyzes app-based diagnosis data, while Mediblock develops a blockchain-based data-sharing platform.

The state-run Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) is responsible for modeling flu inflows and trend prediction. The institute is involved in a separate project to find therapeutic agents that can suppress COVID-19 ribonucleic acid (RNA) cloning. RNA is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes.