A population-level disease monitoring system that employs at-home self-swab kits is being expanded today, at no cost to participants, as part of an infection prevalence study in the San Francisco Bay Area. The system could have broader impact on testing not only for COVID-19, but for other diseases as well.

The service uses the Vera Cloud Testing Platform which continuously aggregates test results and data about symptoms submitted by volunteers to study COVID-19 prevalence in real-time across the region. The system is the result of collaboration by Stanford University with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates Ventures, the University of Washington, Microsoft Research and other private and public institutions.

Vera is a scalable and low-cost “testing-as-a-service” platform that could also be used by public health departments and employers. With its sample self-collection kit and population health monitoring system, it can also be used on a broader scale to help with back-to-school COVID-19 testing for students and staff at schools and universities, an option not readily available today.

Its impact could extend to other types of testing in the future, such as for other viruses, new strains of flu, or to help monitor diseases, says Stephen Quake, Ph.D., the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University, and co-president of the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub.

“What we’ve learned through this pandemic is that there’s a real mismatch between testing capacity and testing need. Certain parts of the country have more than enough testing capacity, and others do not,” Quake says.

Vera helps address that problem by providing a way for people to collect their own sample at home then mail them for testing to labs that can be based anywhere, he says.

To initially test the platform, Stanford Medicine has been conducting a pilot study known as CATCH – Community Alliance to Test Coronavirus at Home – for the past few weeks, and now is officially launching the full study to monitor the spread of COVID-19 in all 12 counties of the greater Bay Area, with the hope of securing up to 100,000 participants during the course of the flu season.

“We’re hoping that this can help address inequities in testing by reaching underserved populations who are often at the highest risk – people who work in essential occupations and may have difficulty accessing health care facility-based testing,” says Quake. Testing is free to those participating in the CATCH study.

Yvonne Maldonado, M.D., a professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at the Stanford School of Medicine, also a leader of the CATCH study and an advisor to the Vera team, says the platform’s compatibility with any type of COVID-19 test means it has the potential to be adopted by a range of organizations, well beyond the initial CATCH study.

“While the CATCH study uses the Stanford laboratory’s RT-PCT assay, you could use an Abbott test, or any other lab or test you want. The software platform allows you to link test results and monitor how infections are spreading through the overall population,” she says.

All Vera participant information and test results are securely protected, Maldonado says, although COVID-19 results are reported to public health departments as required by law. Vera – derived from the Latin word for “truth” – includes a customizable enrollment and testing system, a self-swabbing kit, and a secure participant portal for obtaining results and any other medical follow-up that may be needed.

Microsoft technology, including the Microsoft Healthcare Bot, Azure, Power BI, and Power Platform, was used to help create Vera and CATCH, which adhere to Microsoft’s policies on data and privacy, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft’s commercial software engineering team helped scale SCAN’s epidemiology testing platform that Vera is based on. The Healthcare Bot is used by the Centers for Disease Control, as well as thousands of hospitals around the world, to help screen people for potential COVID-19 infection and treatment. Microsoft’s AI for Good program has been supporting the project team as they have scaled up their efforts.

“What’s exciting about Vera is the ability to track this pandemic in real-time to the degree possible, and give people who might not otherwise be reached access to testing,” Maldonado says. This real-time system also enables health care providers and public health agencies to implement more complex testing algorithms, including increasing testing rates as symptoms are reported, as well as programmatic epidemiological sampling plans, tailored to local exposures, demographics and other characteristics over time.

The researchers say the inspiration for Vera was work done earlier this year by the greater Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), a program that receives funding from Gates Ventures and technical assistance from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and public health authorities.

SCAN uses an at-home kit that allows participants to collect their own sample with a simple swab within the front of each nostril — a far more gentle and less-invasive process than other COVID-19 tests which require a nasal swab to be placed all the way to the back of the throat. The CATCH study uses a similar self-swab method as SCAN.

SCAN grew out of the Seattle Flu Study, which in February detected one of the first documented U.S. cases of community transmission of COVID-19.

From SCAN, CATCH shares “the broader population-level epidemiological understanding of the disease,” says Vikram Dendi, general manager of Microsoft Health NExT. “Where is it breaking now? How is it spreading? How many people are symptomatic?

“Being able to do that by sending kits to your home is a very powerful way of ensuring that you can actually have a much better understanding of the pandemic, and also do it in a much more equitable way,” says Dendi.

COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color as well as those in low-income neighborhoods. But it’s often these communities that have the least access to health care and the greatest barriers to testing. “The design of CATCH as a study intends to try to overcome those kinds of inequities and really develop a very clear and comprehensive picture of how things are evolving,” he says.

From a research and science perspective, Dendi says that Vera and CATCH offer “the ability to better understand the disease spread in a given community, which is really very valuable, and we were very happy to help.”

“It really has quite a bit of potential for not only now, but down the road,” he says. “The promise of return to school, and to have that happen not just for one school, but beyond, is certainly something that we will celebrate as and when that happens.”

Top image: The Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory will provide testing for a pilot use of Vera with the CATCH study. Photo credit: Steve Fisch.

Developer Auroch Digital and publisher The Irregular Corporation have revealed that Mars Horizon will be blasting off on Nintendo Switch on 17th November.

Mars Horizon is a strategy simulation game which has you leading a major space agency, guiding humanity to Mars. You’ll need to construct a base, design and build rockets, conduct missions throughout the Solar System, and write your own history of space exploration.

Impressively, it was actually developed with support from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency, meaning that we should be treated to an authentic experience. You can see the game in action in the trailer above, as well as some screenshots below.

What do you think? Will you be checking this one out on Switch next month? Tell us below.

Facebook quietly dropped support for Oculus Go games and apps from the Oculus Quest 2’s feature set, essentially cutting an entire library of games made for the mid-tier Go headset off from any new VR adopters moving forward.

There wasn’t much of an official announcement. Instead, Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack noted the end of support in tweet spotted by the Road to VR team today. In that tweet, Carmack said that he “totally lost the internal debate over backwards compatibility” and that the Quest 2 doesn’t offer Go emulation because of it.

Oculus-parent Facebook announced plans to bring Oculus Go emulation to the original Quest headset last year, and started to wind down support for the standalone Oculus Go headset just a few months back. With all that in tandem, Go game developers might have had some peace of mind that their apps could live on through emulation on still-supported headsets, but it looks like that won’t be the case.

Given that the Quest 2 is Oculus’ official, and really only, entry point for new VR users, this means that any new adopters won’t be able to purchase or download apps for a system that Oculus just last year called “a game-changer” that “opened up VR to many more people” and “helped redefine immersive entertainment.”

What you need to know:

• Combining Verizon’s on-site 5G Edge network with Microsoft Azure can bring more computing power even closer to end customers, allowing businesses to create extremely low lag experiences
• Ice Mobility is already using 5G and mobile edge computing (MEC) to help with quality control in their pick and pack process by using computer vision to drive efficiencies

NEW YORK and REDMOND, WA – Verizon is joining forces with Microsoft Corp. to create new ways for enterprises to accelerate the delivery of fast and secure 5G applications, benefiting from reliable and low-latency connections. Verizon’s on-site 5G Edge network integrated with Azure edge services can enable ultra-low latency, many times faster than the blink of an eye, which can help businesses tap into real-time data analysis and delivery. Applications incorporating computer vision, augmented, mixed and virtual reality, digital twins or machine learning can be enhanced with 5G and MEC on the customer premise, helping transform the way industries such as retail, transportation, and logistics operate.

Think of automated high-precision asset localization, tracking and positioning in manufacturing. In healthcare, the increased speed, reduced latency and high bandwidth connectivity of 5G networks could enable real-time precision medicine leveraging mixed reality and AI capabilities as well as seamless and fast sharing of large files to improve patient care.

The collaboration brings Azure cloud and edge capabilities together with Verizon’s on-site 5G Edge, a mobile edge computing platform designed to enable developers to build applications for mobile end-users and wireless edge devices with ultra-low latency. By utilizing on-site private 5G, businesses will be able to realize increased power efficiencies and reduced costs of end user devices while addressing their privacy and security needs.

“We have built a network that provides real-world, 5G-enabled solutions TODAY,” said Rima Qureshi, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer at Verizon. “By bringing together Verizon’s 5G network and on-site 5G Edge platform with Microsoft’s expertise in cloud services, we will enable the development of the next generation technologies everyone has been envisioning.”

Logistics and supply chain solutions company Ice Mobility is already testing on Verizon’s on-site 5G Edge platform, integrated with Microsoft Azure. The company is using 5G and MEC to help with computer vision assisted product packing. By gathering data in near real-time on product packing errors, the company has the potential to improve on-site quality assurance and save 15% to 30% in processing time.

“We are especially excited to join Verizon and Microsoft to test how 5G and MEC can improve the quality assurance process,” said Mike Mohr, CEO of Ice Mobility. “They truly have listened to our needs to provide automated real-time quality oversight and feedback, which will enable us to cost-effectively launch unique new products, while maintaining the highest execution standards, significantly increasing throughput and reducing costs. And, this is just the beginning.”

“By leveraging Verizon’s 5G network integrated with Microsoft’s cloud and edge capabilities, developers and businesses can benefit from fast, secure and reliable connections to deliver seamless digital experiences from massive industrial IoT workloads to precision medicine,” said Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president Azure for Operators at Microsoft.

Moving forward, Verizon will explore opportunities to co-innovate with Microsoft to deliver new value to industries ranging from manufacturing to healthcare.

Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network enables throughput at least 25 times faster than today’s 4G networks*; delivers ultra-low latency; and offers very high bandwidth. Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband is expected to eventually enable 100 times larger data volumes than 4G; and the ability to connect more than a million devices per kilometer. Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband service is available to people in 55 cities and its 5G Nationwide service is available to more than 200 million people in more than 1,800 cities around the U.S.

Learn more information about Verizon 5G Edge, Verizon’s 5G technology and explore how Microsoft is working with operators.

About Verizon

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) was formed on June 30, 2000 and is celebrating its 20th year as one of the world’s leading providers of technology, communications, information and entertainment products and services. Headquartered in New York City and with a presence around the world, Verizon generated revenues of $131.9 billion in 2019. The company offers data, video and voice services and solutions on its award winning networks and platforms, delivering on customers’ demand for mobility, reliable network connectivity, security and control.

VERIZON’S ONLINE MEDIA CENTER: News releases, stories, media contacts and other resources are available at www.verizon.com/about/news/. News releases are also available through an RSS feed. To subscribe, visit www.verizon.com/about/rss-feeds/.

* Source: Based on analysis by Ookla® of Speedtest Intelligence® data median download speeds from Verizon 5G results compared to the median 4G LTE speeds of top U.S. carriers combined in Q2 2020. Ookla trademarks used under license and reprinted with permission.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Microsoft Media Contact:

Microsoft Media Relations

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Media Contact:

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Excited to announce we have partnered with @uninterrupted on @NBA2K_2KTV to bring you exclusive content. Premiering today in-game: @morethanavote with @MariaTaylor.
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