In a bid to combat fraud in relief efforts, Crediwatch (CW), a digital trust platform, has developed tools to help validate medical service providers for COVID-19 relief across India. CW claims to enable COVID-19 relief workers, doctors, hospitals and resource teams to quickly ascertain the bonafides of a supplier of medical supplies such as liquid oxygen, medicines, surgical masks and so on.
Since the onset of the pandemic, public, private and civic organisations have circulated information about hospital bed availability, medical supplies such as oxygen, masks, sanitiser and so on. This information is largely crowdsourced and has been a collective effort of several voluntary groups, including the startup community, stepping up to help society-at-large. However, much of this information is being shared without adequate verification on social media, messaging platforms and through relief networks.
“Validation of supplier or vendor information on relief networks and websites is a manual process, and is diverting resources and reducing the impact of relief work,” said Meghna Suryakumar, founder and CEO of Crediwatch.
Hemanth GC, Head-Product at Crediwatch said. “We have put our AI/ML technology tools to the task of verifying supplier profiles.”
How it works
CW’s web platform or APIs (application programming interface) enable relief networks to instantly run checks on businesses claiming to offer a service. CW’s bot infrastructure and proprietary scores will identify any potential risks with a business entity. Only validated businesses can be retained by various relief networks providing critical care across India.
1) Verify the name of the business entity claiming to offer a service (For example: a hospital, a pharmacy, a restaurant, an oxygen supplier, a cylinder manufacturer). This is done using a combination of proprietary data about businesses along with public information from GSTN data. CW will confirm the existence of an entity (business/proprietor) using information from over 2500 public records.
2) Verify phone numbers in an automated, API enabled manner. This is intended to give three pieces of information:
a) The validity of the phone number along with the last tried date/time.
b) The reachability of the phone number with the last tried date/time.
c) Whether the business/entity is continuing to accept requests for service. This is based on disclosures by the service provider when contacted by our automated bot via an IVR response.
To assess the legitimacy of COVID resource suppliers or to look for resources for a loved one or share it with a relief network the company has provided this tool:
Link- https://www.crediwatch.com/covid/verify-covid-resource-suppliers/
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