The Eva project began in summer 2020 when Drakopoulos, curious about Greece’s announcement that it was reopening its borders, sent an email to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis asking questions about the country’s plan and volunteering his help.
Within a few hours, Drakopoulos said, he received a reply directly from Mitsotakis inviting him to a meeting.
Then, USC Marshall and Wharton School researchers, along with AgentRisk founder and CEO Jon Vlachogiannis formed a partnership with Greece to develop Eva for health monitoring in the tourism-dependent country. The country had a limited supply of COVID testing supplies — an experienced shared across the globe due to supply chain issues — yet had to identify likely infected travelers who came through any of the 40 different entries on its borders.
After months of design, development and testing with the Greek COVID-19 scientific task force, the researchers launched Eva.
Eva helped Greek authorities sort through massive amounts of data provided by tourists, such as where they planned to stay and visit, as well as the demographics of each traveler. Researchers programmed Eva to sift through the information and develop profiles of the travelers who were likely infected but asymptomatic and needed testing.
“At the beginning of the cycle, travelers interested in going to Greece fill out a form online,” said Gupta. “They share information like where they’ve been before, demographic information, and their travel itinerary. Based on that information, we — and Eva — were able to recommend who should be tested.”