Sue Feldman, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Health Professions and Heersink School of Medicine, says her project, “HelpBeatCovid19: Crowdsourced COVID-19 Symptom Tracker,” helped build great collaborations across campus.

HelpBeatCOVID19 helps public health officials and health care workers track symptoms before COVID-19 spreads by encouraging people to take a daily survey about their symptoms. The symptom tracker provides up-to-date information that tracks the progression of symptoms in communities in real time.

“When this project was started, things were moving way too fast to think about outcomes,” says Feldman. “The immediate goal was to keep exposures away and prevent the disease from spreading.”

For Feldman, this project furthers her research on building information systems for social good. For her and other collaborators at UAB, this project helped develop great collaborations across campus, ones that otherwise would take years.

This initial funding was only the beginning as it led to $7.1 million in CARES Act funding.

Feldman goes onto say while this wasn’t your typical bench science discovery, it provided a sense of comfort for K-12 and higher education students and families as students and employees were coming back to and remaining on campus.