• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 24, 2020

Amazon and Microsoft researchers separately are working to develop solutions, using their internal resources and expertise in a variety of areas to stop the spread of COVID-19, but not-for-profits are also pushing to provide those in need with quick results.  

Microsoft and Adaptive Biotechnologies on Friday announced an extension on their partnership to map adaptive immune responses to diseases to study COVID-19. Both companies are testing to determine if the immune response signature advances ways to diagnose, treat and prevent the disease. The augments existing research that primarily focus on the biology of the virus. The companies will make the data free to any researcher, public health official or organization through an open data access portal.

Amazon launched the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Diagnostic Development Initiative — a program to support customers who are working to bring better and more accurate diagnostics solutions to market faster.

The company committed $20 million for customers working on diagnostic solutions to promote better collaboration across organizations that are working on similar problems.

AWS opened the program Friday to accredited research institutions and private companies that use AWS to support research-oriented workloads for the development of point-of-care diagnostics, which means testing done at home or at a clinic with same-day results.

“Better diagnostics will help accelerate treatment and containment, and in time, shorten the course of this epidemic,” Teresa Carlson, VP of world public sector at Amazon, wrote in a post.

On Tuesday, Australia-based Rapidward, a not-for-profit, will release a COVID-19 kit that will take 15 minutes to process at a cost of $12. The company also will release FDA-certified N95 surgical masks and N95/FFP2 masks for doctors, hospitals and governments.

For now, Rapidward is only making it available to healthcare professionals, hospitals and health departments.