Delhi: An app to help track potential plasma donors

NEW DELHI: The resident doctors of AIIMS, with the help of IIT-Delhi students, have developed a mobile app to track Covid patients at the hospital in real time. They will also be able to track discharged patients who have the potential to become plasma donors 28 days after their recovery.

The app, COPAL-19, has details of patients who have already been discharged from AIIMS and those currently undergoing treatment along with their blood groups so that patients who require plasma therapy can get it in time without any hassle, said Dr Adarsh Pratap Singh, AIIMS, RDA president.

“Amid shortage of donors for plasma therapy, a team of AIIMS resident doctors and IIT-Delhi students developed an app to correct the mismatch between Covid-19 discharged patients and patients requiring plasma donation. It was a great initiative by Dr Abhinav Singh Verma and the students,” Dr Singh said. The app was launched at the premier hospital on Doctors’ Day on Wednesday.

Dr Verma, resident doctor, neurosurgery department, AIIMS, the main person behind COPAL-19, said it’s a simple user interface application with automated donor matching. Though it has been launched primarily for AIIMS patients for now, the app will be available on open platforms.

“This app will act as a bridge between patients seeking plasma therapy and donors who have recovered and have completed 28 days post recovery,” the doctor added.

The app will also automatically track donors who will be eligible to donate plasma after a cycle of 14 days. The doctor also referred to the case of his senior who was infected with the virus and recalled the difficulties they had to face arranging plasma for him.

“We were already working on developing such an app, but it was after this incident that we really pushed for it and finally launched it on Wednesday,” he said. Currently, 70 plasma donors are registered with the application, he added.