Illinois App Community

The Illinois app is built and developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign by the Smart, Healthy Communities Initiative, a cross-campus collaboration of specialists in science, computing, design, wellness, and the humanities. Our goal is to stimulate innovation in smart technology to make society safer, foster better decision-making, and increase wellness.

The official app of the University of Illinois uses Rokwire, an open source mobile software platform that is available to all under the Apache 2.0 free software license. Rokwire integrates diverse digital resources, data streams, and services into one comprehensive digital ecosystem.

Contributors from groups ranging from Technology Services, McKinley Health Center, and Student Affairs to the College of Engineering, the Siebel Center for Design, and Campus Recreation use human-centered design and integrate input from users to create innovative tools that not only support individuals but also generate better decisions, facilitate democracy, enable scientific discovery, and accelerate access and equity.

Campus Collaborators

Work on the Illinois app and the Rokwire platform has generated a cross-disciplinary network of students, researchers, and other professionals with a broad array of perspectives and expertise. In addition to an advisory panel and committees who shape new features and projects, this junction of diverse viewpoints keeps the app evolving to better meet users’ needs. The Illinois app team with the Smart, Healthy Communities Initiative invites new ideas and new partners to join our coalition.

Integrations

The flexible Rokwire platform and the structure of its building blocks make it possible to pull in and push out data in multiple formats. Users have access to integrated services through a central hub. No need to search websites. No need for multiple apps. The Illinois app bursts open the front door to the University of Illinois.

Building on Success

Rokwire got its start in 2018 when experts in computer science and healthy communities were approached about creating an open source platform to develop smart technologies and mobile apps that could help students succeed, advance scholarship, and address societal challenges. Downloads of the first version of the Rokwire-based Illinois app started in 2019, but the pandemic changed everything.

Around the planet when institutions were scrambling to find a balance between resuming activities and keeping their communities safe in 2020, the Illinois app team members used some of the key insights they’d gained on managing data and the flexibility of the Rokwire platform to create the groundbreaking Safer Illinois app. Safer Illinois coordinated saliva-based virus testing, enabled a building-access pass tied to testing status, provided proximity-based health exposure notifications, and delivered community health recommendations.

Organizations and schools across the nation used the Safer Illinois app as a template to build customized tools for their communities.