Collaborating in the Time of COVID-19: The Scope and Scale of Innovative Responses to a Global Pandemic (Preprint)

• DOI: 10.2196/preprints.25935
• Publication Date: 2020-11-27T13:57:51Z
• Authors: Theresa Bernardo; Kurtis Edward Sob...; Russell Othmer Fo...; Luke Silva Stewart; Marcelo D'Agostino; Enrique Perez Gut...; Daniel Gillis
• Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Pandemic; Data Sharing; Blueprint; Citizen Science; Infographic

<sec> <title>UNSTRUCTURED</title> The emergence of COVID-19 spurred the formation myriad teams to tackle every conceivable aspect virus and thwart its spread. Enabled by global digital connectedness, collaboration has become a constant theme throughout pandemic, resulting in expedition scientific process (including vaccine development), rapid consolidation outbreak data statistics, experimentation with novel partnerships. To document evolution these collaborative efforts, authors collected illustrative examples as pandemic unfolded, supplemented publications from JMIR Special Issue. Over 60 projects rooted are categorized into five main themes: knowledge dissemination, propagation, crowdsourcing, artificial intelligence, hardware design development. They highlight numerous ways that citizens, industry professionals, researchers, academics have come together worldwide consolidate information produce products combat pandemic. Initially, researchers citizen scientists scrambled access quality within an overwhelming quantity information. As curated sets emerged, derivative works such visualizations or models were developed depended on consistent would fail when there unanticipated changes. Crowdsourcing was used collect analyze data, aid contact tracing, personal protective equipment sharing open designs for 3D printing. An international consortium entrepreneurs created ventilator based open-source design. A coalition nongovernmental organizations governmental organizations, led White House Office Science Technology Policy, shared resource over 200,000 research about subsequently offered cash prizes best solutions 17 key questions involving intelligence. thread weaved response, which will shape future efforts. Novel partnerships cross boundaries create better processes, products, consequential societal challenges. </sec>