A new search engine for COVID-19 medical researchers in India has been launched by the faculty and students of artificial intelligence from the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management in Kerala. The search engine is named as ‘Vilokana,’ which means ‘finding out’ in Sanskrit.
‘Vilokana’ is the first search engine dedicated toward the medical community in India amidst the dozens of apps in the country that provide information on the novel coronavirus. Doctors, scientists, and researchers who are racing to understand more about the virus can now keep track of the latest research about Covid-19.
To list journals and articles relevant to the information someone is looking for by typing a keyword, the team used an AI-first approach.
The researcher can see a quick summary of the article at hand, which makes the search engine quite different from Google. By giving access to a wide range of information to those who are working in the field, the search engine could accelerate the process of research, said Professor Alex James, who worked on the search engine.
The team is adding a feature to identify fake information, Alex added. Medical researchers will be the most important people in the coming years
, said Bill Gates recently.However, it’s not the first time a search engine or an aggregator for Covid-19 related research news is being developed.
Scientists and researchers around the world are racing to understand the novel coronavirus since it first appeared in January as this pandemic has come at a time when cutting edge technologies are available, and information flows easily.
Tens of research papers and academic articles related to Covid-19 are coming online every day, and there are micro-sites, search engines, and even communities on Reddit to keep scientists updated.
Also, dedicated tech tools have been developed by organizations like WHO that let doctors and scientists keep track of the latest research on the novel coronavirus.
But the search engine developed by the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management will be of more help to Indian researchers as it is likely to feature a lot of information of India-specific Covid-19 research, unlike the other tools that have a global focus.
