
Ask HN: Open Covid-19 Patient Database - pezo1919
Hello everyone,<p>I am wondering why don&#x27;t people create a database where COVID-19 patients themselves can upload their data to help finding the answers. The dimensions I am thinking about is beyond basic &quot;severeness&quot; and &quot;time to recover&quot; but also nutrition&#x2F;supplement informations or health condition informations, fitness, being too exhausted for a longer time &#x2F; lack of sleep before sympthoms arise.<p>I know many of this is personal information and I also know it is hard to verify these pieces of information, but I think there are many people who are willing to help with their data, but there is no platform for that.<p>I don&#x27;t know how to do this this is just the idea.<p>Edit:
South Korea has already tested more than 140.000 people, (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.hu&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;south-korea-coronavirus-testing-death-rate-2020-3%3famp )
it would be really interesting to see their data.
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TimLipp
I volunteer the next two days to help with this in any way I can. I've been
working on a similar citizen science idea, related to home efficiency
(beaverlodge.game), but it might have some parallels in methodology. My
background is more data science and marketing, but I have a bit of coding
experience as well.

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nezuzen
I just posted an idea similar to this, without having seen yours first:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22574128)

add geolocation data and location based app awareness and alerting.

The problem me thinks are language barriers and cultural-socio privacy
differences.

Next level technology could really help in this space, if we could only get
our global sh*t together...

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probinso
Do not allow PII! Be very careful about what you gather as publicly sourced
data.

Think about what can happen if false data is entered. Consider both malicious
and ignorant cases.

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rayhendricks
Locate the servers outside the USA/EU them all for whatever you want. Hippa is
outdated and designed for a pre Internet Age. We could have our whole health
history running in Apple health yet visible to researchers if allowed. This is
technically possible but the present healthcare industry/government does not
allow this.

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probinso
You can put lives at risk by sharing bad or the wrong type of information.
People who are scared often make bad decisions.

In the wrong environment, sharing someone's identity can be equivalent to
swatting them and their community.

There are deep ethics involved with the decisions that structured many of
these laws. Anytime you are dealing with personally identifiable information,
you have to consider the consequences of trivializing privacy.

Always consider and know the laws for your domain and also take seriously the
ethics.

If you aren't ready to do this, choose to contribute by a different way. There
are many ways to develop resources that can reduce harm, and currently large
online communities brainstorming those ways.

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RocketSyntax
I'm down to help. You could skip a UI and go straight jupyter w csv file - get
some nice visualizations out there quick. Google Forms.

