A Tampa-based analytics company has created a few solutions that could be used in not only tracking coronavirus cases but in predicting the spread.
Lumina Analytics, founded in 2015 and a Tampa Bay Inno Startup to Watch in 2020, reconfigured its data-gathering platform and reporting app to specifically gather and analyze coronavirus-related data. The company's "Radiance" platform is essentially a search engine attached to a supercomputer, allowing for a more in-depth search and narrowing it to the most pertinent results. For example, a Radiance search would be equivalent to 340,000 searches on a typical search engine. The company is working with IBM to triple the capacity of the search engine, which could access a plethora of data.
The data will be tracked and analyzed through the lens of COVID-19 — not only the cases and deaths, but more nuanced indicators of patterns like the volume of specific phrases such as "ban" within an area. Then, that would be analyzed to search for a correlation to cases.
"Some of the things I believe are a challenge right now is we have a lot of data of confirmed cases, even have the horrible data of deaths, and also have data of recovery and those are pretty well known," Lumina Analytics co-founder and Chief Data Scientist Morten Middelfart said. "On the other hand, it's a lot of after-the-fact type of information. ... Getting more predication in front of this problem will hopefully allow us to assist in understanding the problem and be more upfront with it. As with anything, if you know things ahead of time, you have more time to prepare to be in front of it."
The company is also working to expand its offerings of its S4 app, which would let users report their symptoms. The medical community would be able to see where the user is in their virus process.
"Imagine reporting that in large volume — we can get statistical significance very early," Lumina Analytics CEO and co-founder Allan Martin said. "And you see a mass of symptoms coming out from a region. You can say, 'In two weeks this is going to get really bad here.' So it can help with resource allocation and funding."
That upgrade to the app has not been added yet, as Lumina Analytics is waiting for a state or federal sponsor.
"As you know, all the legislation for funding went through late last week," Martin said. "Capital resources are forming up as we speak. This will be something of an ongoing project for emergency management, states, counties, federal. I think this will be worked on for a year."
It's already been in the works for months. Middelfart is originally from Denmark and was monitoring the rise and spread of coronavirus overseas. Lumina Analytics also had a bit of luck: It was in the middle of a deal with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when communication with the organization came to a halt.
"[The deal] was something that was very hot and then they went completely silent," Martin said. "Through that, we were able to see the CDC was really focusing enormous resources on the problem. So we said, 'Let's lean into it. How can we help?'"
