IBM's Call for Code challenges developers to find new solutions to toughest global problems

The novel coronavirus has greatly impacted every aspect of daily life, and created new challenges for communities, industries and countries around the world. But technology can be used to find new solutions to current problems.

IBM is working with the global developer community to find new solutions to help fight the pandemic now and in the future. Through IBM’s Call for Code, a $30 million, five-year global challenge, IBM and its partners are working to unite developers to create applications powered by open source technology that can tackle some of the world's biggest challenges.

IBM’s Daniel Krook joined NewsChannel 7 at 4 on Tuesday to discuss the Call for Code challenge, the three initial winning solutions, and how developers and consumers can get involved and help the global fight against COVID-19.

“In our third year, we asked developers to look at climate change solutions, but we also realized that there’s an opportunity to create social and business applications to address the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

IBM’s Call for Code team received overwhelming support and some exciting early ideas that could become tangible solutions to fight two of society’s biggest challenges. In a single day, over 1,000 developers around the world registered to participate. First responders, at-risk individuals and coders are joining the challenge, sharing their experiences and collaborating on finding new solutions.

The global challenge winners will be announced in October. The winning solutions for Call for Code will be successfully developed, field-tested and deployed in communities that need them most.

In the first two years of Call for Code, there were over 210,000 participants from 165 nations that created over 8,000 applications focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief. This year’s challenge is bigger than ever. IBM Code and Response has deployed Project Owl, the winning solution from Call for Code 2018, in regions recently affected by natural disasters, and is testing 2019 winner Prometeo, a cognitive platform that monitors the health of firefighters in real time while they fight natural disasters.