What is Rona?
Rona is an Artificial Intelligence solution that aims to curb misinformation, by answering questions that people may have regarding the COVID-19 pandemic thus reducing spread of misinformation and demystifying myths.
Who developed Rona?
Rona has been developed by Brian Ndegwa Wambui, a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology second year student at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology taking. And currently incubated at the University’s innovation hub, DeHUB under the mentorship of Kenneth Njihia, Project Coordinator at the DeHUB.
What is the purpose of Rona.
Rona was built becase of the anxiety many people were facing, as they got fed wrong information from the internet intended to cause fear.Brian, who is the developer saw that it could be really helpful, if he developed a platform for people to confirm news from all these sources and avoid panic. The chat interface came about because many people generally love chatting, and most of this misinformation was also spread through chatting.
What is so unique about Rona?
How is Rona different from 719 helpline or the WHO bot? Rona is different in the sense that it lets users ask any questions they may have by giving them the power to ask their own questions. This is a limitation I observed where users were confined to a set of predefined text. Rona's inner working mechanism is also very different since it understands what the user actually wants and either gives a parsed response or gives a link to credible information, based on what the user asked. Rona is also different in the sense that, the more Rona gets used, the more she becomes better at what she does.
Who will it help?
Rona will help anyone who is curious to know anything about this Corona Virus Disease 2019.
Ease of use?
It is normal for some users to get overwhelmed when using a new platform. To solve this, Rona has a series of dynamically generated list of questions that most people have been asking. new user on the platform can use this as a starting point
Credibility of the data.
Rona is trained to gather information from credible sources, mostly government recommended sites or sites approved by WHO to having credible information.
DeHUB
We are looking forward to work with the ministry of health to provide accurate information during this pandemic. It is through accurate information that we can reduce the spread of the disease and reduce misinformation going round. Anybody can visit http://rona.co.ke/ at no cost.