Georgetown University Venture Lab startups launch The COVID-19 Testing Locator

Georgetown University Venture LabApr 9 2020

The Social App and Basil Labs—two startups in the Georgetown University Venture Lab, which is funded by the Lenosis family, have launched The COVID-19 Testing Locator to provide a free utility for anyone in the United States to locate nearby testing locations.

Through this joint initiative, The COVID-19 Testing Locator will work to eliminate medical silos and to foster an ecosystem of trust through an open knowledge culture—during a time when hospitals, governments, organizations and the American people are in desperate need of reliable data and information.

After enough data is collected, The COVID-19 Testing Locator team will create visualizations and address pain points for testing centers to allow them to better manage their resources when supplying treatment or handling logistics. The initiative is also looking to partner with city governments to help them identify coronavirus hot spots.

Features:

• See how far they are from testing facilities.
• Filter locations based on preference (i.e. drive-thru, childrens-only, senior citizens, etc.)
• View contact information for testing centers (if information is available).

As the COVID-19 pandemic has expanded in the United States, many companies have teamed up to provide education resources to keep the American public updated on a rapidly evolving disease. We want to provide people with a centralized area to find testing locations and feel a sense of empowerment in an atmosphere that has most of us feeling otherwise in the dark on the information. Our goal was to build a platform for the common good.”

Raakin Iqbal, Founder of The Social App.

Across the country, COVID-19 testing sites are popping up but are not communicating enough with one another. This is dangerous. Silos lead to information gaps between facilities and slow adaptation of best practices. We don’t have time to wait -- testing sites are maxed out and hospital beds are filled up. We need to survey and understand patient experiences in order to maximize efficiency and safety at testing centers, improve in-patient flows and share this knowledge with testing centers across the nation and world.”

Theo Goetemann, Founder at Basil Labs