Cactus aiming for world's largest Covid-19 research platform

Cactus Communications has announced the launch of covid19.researcher.life, a platform aimed at offering researchers a single – and the world’s largest – platform for all Covid-19-related research, insights, commentary, and expert recommendations. 

The site offers researchers access to the latest research and information on Covid-19 and allows them to collaborate and share potential hypotheses and challenges with researchers from other disciplines.

Abhishek Goel, co-founder and CEO of Cactus, explained: ‘At this time, when we are facing a global pandemic, we need all hands on deck. Across the world, researchers in many disciplines are working hard to find solutions that will shepherd the world out of this crisis: epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists, biostatisticians, emergency and internal medicine specialists, pulmonologists, public health researchers, pharmacologists, pathology researchers, geneticists, cell biologists, social scientists…the list goes on. 

‘Yet, for the first time, we are faced with a crisis that necessitates researchers who normally work in siloed disciplines to tap into each other’s expertise and adopt a multidisciplinary approach. And we want to help them do this.’

Apart from serving researchers working on Covid-19, the new site is aimed at providing policymakers, governments, and lay people access to evidence-based answers to questions around Covid-19. There will also be an opportunity for interested members of the public to help by suggesting answers to problems that researchers and practitioners are struggling with.

Goel continued: ‘With the overwhelming volume of research and information being produced on Covid-19, there needs to be a platform that allows researchers from various disciplines to easily access and digest this information, supported by expert opinion. And that’s exactly what we are offering—a platform that collates research and datasets from different countries, irrespective of the language in which they were published; allows researchers to ask questions and pose hypotheses to other researchers; and curates expert-driven editorial content that simplifies and explains the latest research. 

‘We see this quickly expanding to include on-demand webinars and podcasts, and evolving into a crowdfunding platform for research. Imagine the power of a platform where researchers across disciplines are coming together to learn from each other and find solutions to the pandemic collaboratively.’