Quite a lot actually, according to a Forbes report. Here is a list of five ways the latest digital technology is being used to debug the world from Covid-19.
AI to identify and forecast outbreaks
The tech world is no stranger to fighting viruses, albeit of different kinds. Sophisticated tech like AI (artificial intelligence) is now being used to do one of the most important tasks for containing the virus: detection. AI can accumulate huge amounts of data from new reports, social media posts, documents from government reports, etc and then analyze that data. This is exactly what Canadian startup BlueDot has been doing recently, reports Forbes. The company actually warned about a potential pandemic well before the World Health Organization (WHO) and America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the first public warnings.
AI helping front-line healthcare workers
AI can of course do more than just identifying. Artificial Intelligence company Infervision recently launched a solution for front-line healthcare workers to detect and monitor the disease. As healthcare providers across the world are being overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients being diagnosed with Covid-19, and the pressure of testing even more people, this particular AI solution expedites the CT diagnosis. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has also created an AI enabled system that can churn out diagnosis within seconds with 96% accuracy, the company claimed.
Photo: Neon Brand
Speeding up of claim management through blockchain
Before the patients can even meet the doctors and lab technicians, there is the process of entering their data in the system, making the receipt, fixing appointment time, and so on. All the administrative tasks, in short. A blockchain platform by Ant Financial now offers help with speeding up claims processing and consequently brings down the amount of face-to-face interaction between patients and hospital staff, allowing for not just better management of admin work, but also helping with containment.
Drones to help with supply chain
Drones are now being used as a safe and fast way for delivering medical supplies. Chinese delivery drones are being used to transport medical samples and quarantine material between Xinchang County’s disease control centre and the People’s Hospital. Drones made by Japanese company TerraDrone are being used for this, which are also being used to monitor public spaces, making it much easier for the authorities to enforce quarantine mandates. These are also used for thermal imaging.
Virus-killer robots
T-1000 gave robots a bad rap, but who says the Terminator has to kill humans? Since robots can’t get infected by viruses, not by the biological kind anyways, they are being deployed to carry out a number of tasks other than drones delivery. One in particular, the UVD robots made by Blue Ocean Robotics use ultraviolet light to terminate bacteria and viruses. We may very well see these things roaming around the streets in the near future and saying ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ to deadly viruses like Covid-19.