The Covid Detection Foundation

Virufy is an innovative nonprofit research organization introducing a smartphone app that quickly and accurately identifies the presence of respiratory diseases such as COVID, COPD, flu, RSV, pneumonia, etc. Participants will instantly learn their infection status at no cost through AI-powered analysis of cough patterns. Virufy’s groundbreaking technology has been developed by scientists from the world’s leading universities, including Stanford and MIT, in collaboration with the One Young World ambassador network spanning 198 countries. Featured on Forbes, Yahoo, and MSN, Virufy is reaching underserved regions in an unprecedented endeavor to stop the global pandemic.

Why We Need Your Institutional Partnership & Financial Help

As a fully volunteer-run, 501(c)(3) organization, in addition to our historical success raising funds through crowd-sourcing, presently focused on hospital IRB & crowd-sourced data collection, Virufy has several unmet financial needs to bring this solution to scale the organization globally, in furtherance of the public good. All funds will be used under 501(c)(3) guidelines specified by the US government to maintain our nonprofit status. Budgetary examples:

1. Clinical Data Collection & Validation - In the poorest of countries, that do not have access to traditional medical care, (a) personal protective equipment (PPE), nurse stipends, smartphones, and other costs at hospitals in support of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, (b) data storage / data processing expenses associated with mass collection of cough / speech data.

2. Legal, Financial, Operational, and Administrative - 501(c)(3) nonprofit registration/renewals, legal fees, accounting/tax fees and preparation, financial statements, various software, postage, etc.

3. Insurance & Licenses - General liability (GL), cybersecurity coverage, security certification, medical regulatory licenses, etc.

4. Global Marketing, Grant Writing - Paid social media advertising, search engine optimization consulting, development of marketing strategy and materials, professional video production, specialized expertise in the application of grants (e.g., preparation of business plan, marketing plan, budget, ProForma).

Learn More

More information can be found on our website and LinkedIn.

Other Ways to Help

1. Volunteer your time

2. Spread the word to friends

Virufy is a nonprofit research organization developing a smartphone app to diagnose COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases through cough and breathing sound analysis. Our team comprises 60 partner organizations and 250 volunteers including faculty and alumni from Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, CMU, UChicago, UW, and MIT.

We need to file our nonprofit tax return but given the complexity, need to hire an expert CPA accountant to file for us, estimated at $2,000-$2,500. Unfortunately, we are out of operating capital and our expected grant funds would not allow expenses for such hard operation costs (the grants funds are generally restricted for AI R&D and clinical work at universities).

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We are now building a surveillance testing system to rapidly detect known and unknown respiratory disease presence across populations (e.g. in schools or elderly care homes) and forecast predicted spread patterns.

Virufy’s differentiators include our massive dataset of cough sounds collected under IRB approval from 250,000+ PCR-tested patients in five countries, Stanford-patented diagnosis algorithm with 84% sensitivity / 84% specificity, and powerful network with access to top government, academic, corporate leaders in 200+ nations.