From the enduring COVID-19 pandemic to the slow burn of climate change or broiling racial tension, the “real facts” will always be available to us, if there’s a will and a way to perceive them.

While high level, generic data can inform broad-brush decisions, highly specific data provided by startups is giving true insight for meaningful action on COVID-19, the climate crisis and diversity.

Getting out of these crises requires evidence-backed choices from decisions makers — and that includes you.

It might be tempting to write off “decisions makers” as a boardroom cabal of distant suits. But we all have choices to make. Every decision, big or small, affects the outcomes of the pandemic, the climate crisis and the struggle for equality.

Data startups are beginning to measure, count, compile and compute to help us make the most informed choices. From new algorithms to virtual reality and wearable tech, startups are gathering the data that can guide our actions in these crises.

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How data helps during pandemics

During the COVID-19 pandemic, data has been the guiding light for some. In its absence, others have been lost in the dark.

The South Korean government learned the value of data — and data transparency — in the 2015 MERS epidemic.

After 36 deaths and a public backlash about the government’s lack of transparency, new legislation allowed for fast, free testing, public data sharing for contact tracing, and mandatory isolation of the most serious cases in any new pandemic.

When COVID-19 cases started spiking in March, South Korea was testing at the world’s fastest pace, even when they had only 5000 cases. The South Korean government also gathered and shared a huge amount of data to enable contact tracing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, anonymized information, including which travel routes confirmed cases had taken, helped people decide if they were likely to have come into contact with an infected person.

The government in South Korea even shared if the infected people were wearing a mask or not.

Empowered by the data the government was sharing, South Koreans were taking action by getting tested or self-isolating.

By now, we know all too well how things went in the absence of testing, tracing and transparency.

Fundamentally, South Korea’s success is a case of data informing action on a national level. Their protocol of testing, tracing and treating worked because it gave people just enough data to decide what to do.

But in some cases, even more highly specific data is needed to inform the most effective actions. That’s where data startups are stepping in.

Data generated by wearable tech

While the national government of South Korea tracked people on a population level, some startups are getting much more granular.

Care Predict, for example, is a data startup helping to protect highly sensitive seniors in communal facilities by using contact tracing on the most localized level possible.

Data published in the New York Times suggests a COVID-19 mortality rate of 15% for people over 80.

This vulnerability creates an acute need for data-driven, life-saving decisions about testing and isolation in residential care facilities, which are too small for broad brush stay-at-home orders to actually protect their vulnerable inhabitants.

#startup #covid19 #diversity #climate-change #data #data analysisa