Bodhish Thomas, a 25-year-old techie from Pandalam, has long championed the importance of open-source technology as a force for good in the uncertain times.
In 2018, when the State was reeling under one of the worst floods in its history, he teamed up with a few of his friends and came up with afterflood.in , a crowd sourced data hub for post-flood related content focusing on health and well-being. The website, which immediately found a place in keralarescue.in run by the government of Kerala, has assisted people not just in Kerala, but in Tamil Nadu too when the cyclonic storm of Gaja made its landfall, and in Karnataka as well during the Kodagu floods last year.
A couple of years later, when the world confronted one of its toughest problems in the form of COVID-19, this open-source technology once again propelled more contributions from the youngster .
With the support of some 300-odd software professionals, Mr.Thomas has overseen the development of Coronasafe Network — an open-source pandemic management software solution that presently serves as the digital war room of several districts across six states, including Kerala, Maharastra, Haryana and Tamil Nadu. The network has also been co-opted for the remote tele-ICU management under the 10-bed ICU project in 150 districts across the country.
“Launched along the lines of afterfloods.in , it took us about 75 days to develop it as a digital war room for a particular region. It's a multifunctional tool that provides real-time analytics of hospital facilities available, oxygen monitoring, capacity utilisation, patient management, tele-medicine and ambulance etc'', explained Mr.Thomas.
The tool has now won him global recognition in the form of an open-source grant from GitHub — the world’s largest open-source developer community platform. The network, meanwhile, has also been recognised by the United Nations as a Global Digital Public Good – an acknowledgment accorded to open-source software that can help achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Having made a full-time career as a professional software developer, Mr.Thomas has now set his eyes on building a community-driven education programme for the poor using the open-source technology. “We are in the process of developing a volunteer community to develop an open approach to learning and education'', he added.