Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM), through its innovation arm TM Research & Development Sdn Bhd (TM R&D), has launched a data exchange platform for open data sharing to combat COVID-19.
In a statement today, TM said the one-stop data exchange centre aimed to facilitate and accelerate data sharing for Malaysians and the global community to bolster research efforts on the pandemic.
Fully supported by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), this initiative would expedite the access to data for developers, students, scientists and medical practitioners as well as government agencies to gather new insights on the pandemic and eventually pave the way for major breakthroughs, it said.
TM said the one-stop data exchange centre would also allow industries to better understand consumer behavioural changes, movement patterns and impact on businesses, hence enabling governments and economists to view the effects on certain sectors that may not have been obvious in the initial stage.
“Data on changes of purchasing habits or whether people are collectively spending more or less on food against beauty products, travelling patterns, transportation use, movement of people and many more can also be made accessible (on the platform),” it added.
TM R&D chief executive officer Sharlene Thiagarajah said the company was a strong advocate of sharing “open data” in order to harness the power of the community to work towards providing better overall insights on the current pandemic.
MDEC data ecosystem development director Karl Ng Kah Hou said the data exchange platform, designed to collect and disseminate data about the pandemic, would pool all data into one focal point and empower researchers, data scientists, and analysts to accelerate their efforts in finding solutions for COVID-19.
