The solutions have come from teams around the world and they address issues like helping small businesses, keeping people safe when they need to go to public places, and people’s well-being.

Call for Code is more than a hackathon. The winning solutions are successfully developed, field-tested and deployed in communities that need them most. Our goal is to work quickly to partner with three teams to get their innovations out in the field where they can quickly make an impact.

We’ve seen overwhelming enthusiasm pour in from the developer community. Word about Call for Code is spreading, too – you may have even seen the video of Lady Gaga encouraging developers, technologists and problem solvers around the world to take on COVID-19 by building innovative technology solutions. In fact, one of the developers whose solution was chosen as a top submission joined the Challenge after seeing the Lady Gaga video on a local broadcast.

IBM launched the Call for Code Global Challenge to take on society’s most pressing issues. Since 2018, this movement has grown to over 300,000 developers and problem solvers across 168 countries who have answered the call. On Tuesday, IBM announced three initial top solutions that have the potential to make a real difference in the world and contribute to the COVID-19 response efforts.

The three top solutions announced Tuesday:

-Safe Queue was created by a single developer in Los Angeles, who was inspired to join Call for Code after seeing Lady Gaga’s video about the global challenge on the local news. Safe Queue is an app to help tackle those long lines we’ve all seen during COVID-19 at shopping centers, small businesses and even polling places. The app replaces physical lines with on-demand virtual lines, creating a safer way to manage entry during COVID-19. The developer used one of our starter kits – the Call for Code Community Cooperation starter kit – to create this solution, as well as IBM Cloud Foundry for web app hosting, HERE technologies for geolocation, and IBM Cloudant to store data.

-COVID Impact is a solution to help small businesses during this uncertain time. It was created by a global team that came together at the University of British Columbia, hailing from Canada, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Mexico. Their solution reduces the financial impact of COVID-19 on small businesses, by keeping them updated on the latest relevant news and available grants. COVID Impact uses IBM Watson Tone Analyzer linguistic analysis and other technologies to help forecasts businesses’ financial risk.

-The "Are You Well?" app, created by a team from Altran in India, will help reduce the strain on busy healthcare systems. Their app helps people evaluate their symptoms, with the help of IBM Watson Assistant. A global dashboard assigns cases a high, medium or low level of risk based on thresholds set by healthcare providers. The solution then connects people with medical professionals who use the data to prioritize cases and offer care in a safer manner.

"The response for the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge has been tremendous," said Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications at IBM.

There is still an opportunity to join the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge. Register and get all the resources you need here, including exclusive access to a new disease tracker API from The Weather Company. We’ll continue to accept submissions for both climate change and COVID-19 through July 31, and plan to announce our global challenge winners in October.

The Weather Company: https://weather.com/news/news/2020-05-05-ibm-call-for-code-global-challenge