How can IoT be Used to Fight Against COVID-19?

The current COVID-19 is disturbing countries; the increasing cases and death news has alerted everyone.WHO has declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020.

The world is facing challenges currently like identifying the origin of the epidemic, decelerating its spread, and having enough medical resources to treat patients.

Pain points in a virus pandemic:

The increased spread of the COVID-19 has punctured all the services and exposed many structural problems in governments’ health response systems.

All these sudden exposers of the problems redirect us to the conclusion – inability to regulate the solutions which can dominate the expansion of the outbreak.

Tracking the eye of an outbreak, quarantining the infected patients to stop the further spread, treating infected patients, and making sure for no spread between medical staff and patients. All these ‘needs of the time’ require enormous human resources.

The accelerated epidemic will curb the system and will make it more fragile and weak.

Any way or solution that can help in this pandemic?

IoT Application during COVID-19:

In this current COVID-19 crisis, IoT is already contributing to managing some aspects of the COVID-19.

For instance, drones are already employed for monitoring roads and the public to assure quarantine and wearing masks. AI has also been adopted to predict future outbreaks.

Some notable applications of IoT:

• IoT integrated thermometers are being used in hospitals and other public places to screen patients and staff to detect which US countries are seeing an increase in fever( high fever is the symptom of COVID-19). These map-wise data generated provides unparalleled real-time disease surveillance, which enables health services to respond as early as possible.
• IoT connected wearables have become an essential part of the Corona crises. In Wuhan, China, Patients and staff at a field hospital wore rings and bracelets synched with an AI platform for monitoring vital signs like temperature, heart rate and blood oxygen levels. The government of Hong Kong is using electronic tracker wristbands to inform and alert administration ( health authorities) if any person is coming from international destinations and is not following compulsory home quarantine directed by them. On the other side, a team of entrepreneurs have developed an advanced wristband that vibrates when a person wearing it tries to touch his/her face ( the most probable way through which virus is spread.)
• Robots are used to relieve the stress of healthcare workers and contribute to assisting in treatments. The 5G connected robots deliver drinks, food and medication to patients. They are even used to disinfect hospitals and other risk locations.
• In Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada), hospitals are installing IoT buttons (battery operated and connected through LTE-M) that sends alerts to management for cleanliness or maintenance issues that can cause risk of virus spread, endangering lives. Through this facility managers can track signals and staffs’ response time to schedule the cleaning rotations.
• Drones are not just monitoring lockdown but are carrying medical samples and supplies to and from COVID-19 hotspots. Drones are also employed for spraying disinfectant in some public spaces and vehicles which are crossing through the most affected areas.

Well, the time has re-defined the potentials of the IoT services and the requirement of it in businesses. There are IoT app development companies which can help you and your business for staying safe.

Also Read: IoT- An Advanced Approach to Update Small Businesses

Investigation of COVID-19 through IoT:

The numerous and diverse data collected by mobile devices are used by IoT for various application during this COVID-19 stress.

IoT can be used to discover the origin of an outbreak:

An IoT based study by researchers at MIT used aggregated mobile phone data to trace the spread of dengue virus in Singapore during 2013-2014.

The overlaying GIS ( Geographical information system) on IoT mobile data from the patients can help in many ways. On one hand it can help epidemiologists in tracing the patient zero. On the other hand, it can help in identifying people who have come in touch with the infected one as they may be infected.

Restricting People for quarantine using IoT:

IoT can act as a watcher to ensure that patients are following the quarantine properly. Health care personnel can monitor the infected person following is quarantine or breached it. If the person has breached then through IoT data, one can track who else may be exposed to the virus through the infected person.

IoT holding responsibility for patient care and management:

The attributes of IoT has come in deep use for the surveillance of patients who either need to be quarantined at home or need in-hospital care.

With IoT, patients can check their temperature and upload the data of the same with their mobile devices to the cloud for analysis. This facility grants help worker accessibility to maximum data in less time while assuring no spread of the virus through a patient.

Through IoT devices, medical staff can keep remote monitoring of in-home patients with chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension. The regular checkup of heartbeat and blood pressure through wearables can provide a big relief to the medical workers. The provided data can be analysed for identifying the pattern.

Also Read: Is IIoT is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

IoT to remain Healthy:

Adding IoT in your indoor environments could help you in staying safe from the infectious disease in today’s world.

According to EPA, indoor air in homes might be more polluted than outdoor air. The advent of COVID-19 has closed the outside world. Thus, we have to stay inside breathing impure air, which can never be healthy. Having a good IoT enabled indoor air management can add a lot to your living.

In offices, the indoor environment should be healthy and comfortable. The business owners should add an indoor air quality management program that can control contaminations and maintain ventilation.

In an indoor air quality program, IoT platform monitors the air quality by detecting the pollutants and helps in maintaining the fresh air inflow. It even provides actionable data which one can use to address existing issues and document your improvement over time.

IoT, IoT and Only IoT:

It is now obvious that the combination of existing technology and the IoT components can be used to empower the healthcare system to deal with the disease. The only obstacle is that- they are fragmented but not connected.

This means that systems need to be able to build up its infrastructure quicky to connect to the data collection components, processing and storage to enable the system to tract disease, monitor quarantine and keep a watch on an infected one.

In the coming years, IoT would get a special place for its contribution to the development of the health care system. It could detect the infection more quickly and deliver other services more efficiently. The advanced health care management in an office or any other place may include indoor sensor technology for virus detection, pollutant or any other toxic.

Thus getting IoT services or contacting an IoT development company would be better for your health and business as well.

In the end, Stay Safe.