COVID-19 has brought to the fore many new innovations and different ways in leveraging Information Technology.
The healthcare personnel, the civic authorities and the police have used technology extensively to fight the pandemic. Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Chatbots, Telemedicine, Block Chain, Face Recognition, Drones, Robots, Smart Helmets, Thermal imaging cameras are at the top of the list of technologies that were deployed.
The deep-learning based AI has been trained and deployed to study the lungs to detect Covid 19 in patients. This system can study the CT scan like how a physical doctor would examine and also predicts as accurately as a doctor would. AI used in drug repositioning and repurposing has helped in Covid-19 treatment.
Data Analysis has helped us in a greater way to fight Corona Virus. Social distancing was implemented across the world after a study on spatial data on human mobility. The study conducted on people movement in hospitals, malls, public places, super markets gave insight to the police department for law enforcement and achieve complete lockdown.
Chatbots created based on the AI has made screening facilities into man less and online facility. Chatbots in most hospitals and healthcare centre has acted as the first point of contact and a comprehensive symptom checker. Chatbots depending on the medical data and using probabilistic reasoning engine evaluates a user’s risk factors, medical history and current symptoms via patient portal, by handling the queries outside office hours and also in identifying medical emergencies.
Telemedicine has bridged the gap between the physicians, healthcare systems and the patients. During this stay at home period many people with prolonged illnesses and have high risk of getting exposed to infections were able to continue their routine check-up by using the telemedicine facility. Most of the telemedicine apps and homecare equipment found its market and wide use during this pandemic.
The distributed ledger system used by the Blockchain technology has enables a transparent information flow throughout the health care management system. This has helped the government in finding the outbreak of infectious disease in certain pockets of the society and crisis management. Block chain has helped disperse healthcare insurance claims and settling the bills. This has also played a major role by keeping the healthcare supply chain intact.
Face recognition technology has come up with algorithm to read faces with mask, with 95 and with face shield and any other covers. This has helped people to follow the new norms and at the same time take care of the security aspects too.
Drones have played a key role from carrying medicines to remote corners, to help police give instructions with microphones in dispersing crowds. Robots have taken the complete care of sanitizing hospitals. Smart helmets with the thermal camera can screen upto 13 people at a time. These have been deployed in high density area.
Technology, innovations and fine tuning of existing devices with the support of the rugged IT infrastructure, have helped us a long way in our fight against Covid-19.
