2020 is destined to be a year full of surprises. Lots of terrible things have happened, among which, COVID-19 deserves to be the most influential and wide-spread. Starting from the beginning of 2020, corona virus has been spreading around the whole world for over 9 months. With high transmissibility and no effective vaccine or therapy, COVID-19 has now become a global pandemic (Whitelaw etc., 2020) as well as the biggest challenge to all human beings in this year. Since there is no cure yet in the market, the only measure we can take is to protect ourselves from getting infected at the first place. Even though it seems like a pure medical problem, yet digital technology has been an unexpectedly powerful help in the prevention measures.
Throughout the whole process of pandemic management and response, digital health technology facilitates in lots of ways that are difficult to achieve manually (Whitelaw etc., 2020) .
Information Spreading
First, through digital platforms, authorities can provide official, trustworthy and timely data information and advice about COVID-19. Specifically, the number of daily new cases helps people understand the severity of the current situation and arise their cautiousness while getting in physical touch with other people; and reliable information from the governments helps people make informed decisions about their daily routines and build public trust (Jiang and Ryan, 2020).
Self Diagnose and Monitory
Digital data and AI make it easier to detect one’s health condition, whether one is infection or not and how this virus is developing in ones body. Kind of amazing right? This happened in South Korea where an AI company released free COVID-19 analysis software for early diagnosis and assessment of virus symptoms. The software can detect, segment and produce 3D models of lung damage caused by COVID-19 based on analysis of CT images (Jiang and Ryan, 2020), clearly bringing reassurance to people.
Contact Tracking
In the face of epidemic disease, one of the biggest challenges for health industry is to prevent it from even wider spreading, however, for everyone of us, one of the biggest challenges is to know whether the person that we have physical contact with is carrying the virus. Even though wearing a mask helps a lot in protecting oneself from getting infected, there still are occasions where we have to take off our masks and humans are after all social animals that cannot live without getting contact with others. Lots of countries have launched mobile phone application that exchanges short-distance bluetooth signals when individuals are in proximity to each other. The application records these encounters and stores them in users system for 21 days, and if any individual is diagnosed with COVID-19, all close contacts will be informed required to do the tests (Dick, 2020). Even though privacy might stand as a serious issue, this application does help a lot in reassuring people.
Remote Communication – Online Education and Work from Home
When social distance becomes a must-to-do, it is time to reconsider the form of working and studying, which are basically social activities nobody can live without. While technology usually gets a bad rap for preventing socialization, it seems to be the thing we rely on to stay connected during the outbreak. Information technology has provided us with infrastructure and apps that allow us doing video and audio calls, messaging and sharing (My Computer Career, 2020). While stuff are not able to be present for work, online meetings bring everyone together. While students and teachers are not able to attend class in a physical classroom, cloud courses make teaching possible, and probably even more effective since students can turn to the recordings later if something are missed during the live session.
References:
My Account Career, The Guide to Information Technology and Its Role During COVID-19, https://www.mycomputercareer.edu/the-guide-to-information-technology-and-its-role-during-covid-19/. Date accessed: Oct 7, 2020
News National, Singapore’s coronavirus temperature screening and tracking are leading the way. https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2020/03/19/singapore-coronavirus-temperature-scans/, Date accessed: Oct 7, 2020
Whitelaw, S., Mamas, M. A., Topol, E., & Van Spall, H. G. C. (2020). Applications of digital technology in COVID-19 pandemic planning and response. The Lancet Digital Health, 0, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30142-4.
World Bank Blogs, How does digital technology help in the fight against COVID-19, https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/how-does-digital-technology-help-fight-against-covid-19#:~:text=First%2C%20through%20digital%20platforms%2C%20authorities,and%20advice%20about%20COVID%2D19.&text=Reliable%20information%20from%20the%20governments,routines%20and%20build%20public%20trust/. Date accessed: Oct 7, 2020
