VINGROUP Innovation Fund to Fight Against Covid-19

Prof. Le Thi Huong, Dean of Institute of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at Hanoi Medical and Chairperson of SEAOHUN Executive Board, her team, and international collaborators from the SEA region, US and UK won the VINGROUP Innovation Fund to fight against Covid-19. The group proposed to develop a “National Early Warning System on global Covid-19 epidemics for risks assessing and emergency response planning (EpiNEWS)” for Vietnam.

The project will apply machine learning techniques on datasets of cases reporting and surveillance systems to understand the patterns of transmissions, at-risk groups of individuals and locations, changes and spreads of current epidemics and its predictions over time. Secondly, it will develop a big data on epidemic vulnerabilities at the provincial level of Vietnam to timely quantify the risk, inform the selection of control measures and assess the effectiveness of responses. In addition, the project will set up the mechanisms of global and regional researchers in infectious diseases modelling to provide technical advices for Vietnam specifically. Finally, the project will create a web-based or app-based EpiNEWS to routinely provide updates on epidemics and advices for authorities and citizens in a timely manner.

This project will inform the development of national and regional strategies for Covid-19 epidemic control and prevention. Approaches and models for this Covid-19 control and prevention can be applied to other epidemics that hold potentials in occurring in Vietnam in the future. Better strategic information will also help the governments, corporations, sectors and individuals to prevent health and socioeconomic damages due to insufficient responses to the epidemics.