In order to prevent bottlenecks in the medical and diagnostic sector during the pandemic, our Biology department is supporting the online platform PIRAT, which is committed to ensuring that laboratory equipment and manpower arrive where they are urgently needed.

The rapid and uncontrolled spread of the new corona virus poses an unprecedented challenge to our healthcare system. In order to mitigate a pandemic, it is particularly important to specifically identify, isolate and medically treat infected persons. All these necessary measures require the appropriate equipment, such as pipettes or PCR cyclers for diagnosing infected persons, protective clothing for medical personnel to treat the sick, and much more. In times of corona crisis, however, these things are often missing. A little logistical fine-tuning can help to bridge supply bottlenecks, because often, these necessary things are already there, but are lying unused in the wrong place.

 

What's it all about?

And this is where PIRAT comes into play. PIRAT stands for "Pandemic Important Resource Allocation Tool" and is an idea that is as simple as it is ingenious: Laboratories that are closed due to the crisis can enter their unused but valuable resources on the PIRAT platform and thus make them available where they are urgently needed. Diagnostics and health centers can then search for and request these consumables. Even personnel trained in handling medical samples who are currently not allowed to work at their usual workplace can offer their help through PIRAT and lend a hand. In this way, our department can actively help to get the corona crisis under control better and faster. Right now, we are also affected by laboratory closures, but our equipment can be put to good use elsewhere.

 

The idea

The idea for PIRAT was born during the nationwide #WirVsVirus-Hackathon, which called on the general population to brainstorm and look for new solutions in the fight against the Corona crisis. Together with more than 28,000 other citizens, a biologist from Osnabrück took part and sat down at the PC for a weekend with other chemists and computer scientists from all over Germany to work on this concrete idea. The result is the sharing platform PIRAT.

We, the Department of Biology at the Osnabrück University, believe in this tool and see it as our contribution to the fight against the virus. Together with the TU Kaiserslautern and the Society of German Chemists, we are on course against COVID-19.