{"id":246367,"date":"2021-05-10T17:40:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T14:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-french-tech-whiz-bringing-covid-data-to-the-masses\/"},"modified":"2021-05-10T17:40:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T14:40:01","slug":"the-french-tech-whiz-bringing-covid-data-to-the-masses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-french-tech-whiz-bringing-covid-data-to-the-masses\/","title":{"rendered":"#The French tech whiz bringing COVID data to the masses"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The French tech whiz bringing COVID data to the masses<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"Guillaume
\n Guillaume Rozier, creator of the hugely popular Covidtracker.fr site.
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At just 25 years old, Guillaume Rozier is devising the most popular tools to emerge during France’s COVID-19 pandemic\u2014the data websites charting the costs of the crisis, and the progress in the fight to end it.\n <\/p>\n

“I would never have imagined all the innovations, the creativity, that have their source in these data,” Rozier told AFP.<\/p>\n

His COVIDtracker.fr site and its siblings, now maintained with the help of an army of volunteers, have become essential reading earning the praise of President Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n

A lawmaker in his centrist party, Francois Jolivet, on Monday urged Health Minister Olivier Veran to present Rozier with the Legion of Honour, France’s highest civil distinction.<\/p>\n

Rozier got the idea to start putting France’s COVID numbers in context in March 2020, while finishing his engineering studies at the Telecom Nancy university in eastern France.<\/p>\n

He was focusing in particular on artificial intelligence and the exploitation of Big Data, just as French officials were anxiously watching as coronavirus cases began to overwhelm neighbouring Italy.<\/p>\n

To see if French cases were poised to soar as well, Rozier sought out mortality rates and COVID infection numbers compiled by Johns Hopkins university in the United States.<\/p>\n

A graph comparing the two rates was unequivocal\u2014despite a lag of a few weeks, France was going to face the same struggle as Italy.<\/p>\n

Big Data believer<\/b><\/p>\n

Rozier shared his discoveries with friends and relatives, who began clamouring for daily updates as the pandemic worsened and France went into its first lockdown on March 17.<\/p>\n

So he created a website with charts that updated automatically and posted the link on Twitter<\/a>, where demand for the virus data went viral.<\/p>\n

Baptised COVIDtracker, it quickly became a go-to source for the grim tolls on deaths and hospitalisations.<\/p>\n

“It had 10 million unique visitors in April 2021,” Rozier said.<\/p>\n

When France began its inoculation drive in January, he added Vaccinetracker, which soon made it clear that the campaign was getting off to a slow start compared with some European neighbours.<\/p>\n

But securing official health ministry data wasn’t easy\u2014Rozier warned he would shut down the vaccines site unless the data was made freely available, which officials eventually did.<\/p>\n

“All data produced by an administration should be published quickly and thoroughly, and in a format that renders it easily accessible for automation,” he insisted.<\/p>\n

As more people became eligible for getting a jab, Rozier rolled out Vitemadose, a one-stop solution for finding vaccine app<\/a>ointments via several reservation platforms including Doctolib.<\/p>\n

His latest creation goes live Wednesday, when Chronodose will let any adult search for unfilled vaccination appointments. That comes just a week after Macron announced these would be open to any adult regardless of age or health condition in a bid to ensure no doses go to waste.<\/p>\n

“Every day there are still several thousands of vaccination slots still available for the same day or the next,” Rozier said.<\/p>\n

“You can imagine everything that data access could see develop, in health care but also the economy, transports, global warming or energy,” he added.<\/p>\n

But while keeping on with COVIDtracker, Rozier now has a day job\u2014working for an IT consulting firm that is part of the US giant Accenture.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Follow the latest news<\/a> on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2021 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n The French tech whiz bringing COVID data to the masses (2021, May 10)
\n retrieved 10 May 2021
\n from https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2021-05-french-tech-whiz-covid-masses.html<\/p>\n

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