Although much less fatal than Ebola and SARS virus epidemics, Coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) has spread to people more than 1,25,000 in fewer than 50 days in more than 120 countries.
Pain points of the Pandemic
The accelerated outspread of coronavirus has exacerbated and exposed infinite structural problems in the governments’ health care response system. The inability to scale the solution during such a crisis is causing a global fear.
Identifying and tracking the origin of an outbreak, quarantining potentially infected patients, giving the highest medical treatments to the patients who are severely affected and preventing cross-infection between medical staff and patients – all of these require a tremendous amount of human resources. On top of that, an accelerated epidemic will worsen and strain the system even further.
Is there even a solution that’s scalable and automated?
Currently, IoT is extensively used to battle coronavirus, here are some of the examples –
Dissecting an Outbreak
IoT can be used to locate and discover the origin of an outbreak. An overlaying Geographic Information System (GIS) on IoT Mobile data from the severely infected patients can do two things –
- Upstream – it can help epidemiologists in their search to track down the patient zero.
- Downstream – it can help identify all the patients who may or may not have come in contact with the infected patients to realize whether or not they’re infected.
Ensuring compliance with Quarantine
China’s security and surveillance giants have a real-world laboratory to conduct their research and hone their technologies that are not available anywhere else. From Robocop glasses to facial recognition vending machines, China’s emerging high-tech surveillance keeps a tight check ensuring people comply with quarantining themselves.
Source – XINHUA NEWS AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES
To Manage Patient Care
Consolidating Electronic Medical Records (EMR), patient monitoring and scheduling systems into one place has helped health systems reduce a huge amount of manual labor. In one reported instance, a healthcare worker had patients standing in their apartment balconies – so that he could launch a drone to take their temperatures with an infrared thermometer. With the help of IoT, patients can now have their temperatures, blood – sugar levels are taken and recorded in their mobile devices to the cloud for analysis. This is a great way of reducing cross-infection amongst the patients.
Also, several Chinese firms have fostered automated technologies for contactless delivery, spraying disinfectants everywhere and carrying out basic diagnostic functions, in order to minimize the risk of cross-infection.
Shenzhen-based Pudu Technology, known for making robots for the catering industry, has reportedly installed its machines in more than 40 hospitals around the country to help medical staff.
Disinfecting robots, smart helmets, thermal camera-equipped drones, and advanced facial recognition software are all being deployed in the fight against Covid-19 at the heart of the outbreak in China.
CovidVisualizer
Internet of Things has come up with an amazing interactive platform called Covidvisualizer.com that provides you real-time data of the people affected around the globe, it shows –
- The number of total patients affected by the virus
- The total number of deaths encountered.
- The number of patients recovered.
- Lastly, the number of active cases.
Source: Covidvisualizer.com
There isn’t any need to watch the television, this site provides you with updated real-time data with exact news on time. The coronavirus information in this site is developed by two students from the Cambridge Mellon University – Navid Mamoon and Gabriel Raskin. They wanted to build something that could bring all of humanity together in this crisis. Once you take a look at the CovidVisualizer, you will understand the real situation of what every country is going through. Because of the enormous progress in the Internet of Things, we are now able to get real-time data.
Chatbots help ease Patient’s Fears
Many healthcare companies have updated their algorithms in order to create Chatbots that help screen users for the virus before they visit a hospital or clinic. The ideology behind this is to help patients identify the symptoms earlier and reduce unnecessary visits.
An on-demand primary care app called 98point6 released a coronavirus screening chatbot in January. Despite mixed results, designers have been continually updating the algorithm with symptom-specific changes, according to STAT.
Maximizing Output by Eliminating the Stress
Nothing is certain about this current health crisis and we don’t even know when it will be over or what the fallout would look like. But one thing we do know is that we have necessary tools and powerful technologies like the IoT, RPA, AI, etc. that have the potential to reduce the risk and play a big part in alleviating the strain.
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