These days, the whole world is experiencing a pandemic of contagious diseases known as Coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19. Day by day, the number of people getting infected with Coronavirus is increasing. And, due to that, the WHO has declared a global health emergency.
Just like any other outbreaks, COVID-19 is facing serious challenges such as identifying the beginning point of the epidemic, dropping down the spread of the virus, and having a sufficient amount of medical resources to treat all the patients with severe symptoms.
But there is one easily scalable and automated solution to this issue. And, that is – IoT.
IoT is made up of several functional components such as data collection, transfer, analytics, and storage. Today, there are various applications of IoT that is being used to manage a few aspects of the COVID-19. For example, drones are being used for public scrutiny to make sure quarantine and to check whether the people are wearing masks or not. As per the study, AI is also being used to predict future outbreaks areas.
Here in this article, we have discussed how IoT is being used in the different stages of the COVID-19 outbreak with some of the practicable hi-tech ideas.
1. Digital Thermometer
Some countries are already started using digital thermometers that provide health care experts and the user with excellent advantages. With it, they can more precisely read the temperature. This IoT solution even come with the applications that record the patient’s historical data which can be easily shared with a doctor or a nurse via email.
2. Thermal Sensors
Some advanced country has already started employing thermal imaging gear at their key screening checkpoints. It allows them to get more precise thermal imaging than the commonly used radiometric thermal scanners that are used to analyze if a person’s body temperature is above the normal human range or not. If the temperature is high, then the officials will recommend certain people to medical authorities for further treatments.
3. Drones + Thermal Cameras = Aerial Thermography
The next in the list is thermal cameras. Nowadays, a few drone cameras are being used along with thermal camera scanners to find out the temperature of people who are in quarantine with an aim to break the chain of the COVID-19 spread. This highly advanced monitoring device can spot out the person whose body temperature is above than the normal human body temperature range in a crowd before giving out this data to healthcare professionals. This kind of technology of using the thermal camera + drones is known as aerial thermography. In this way, this IoT solution can be used to help us with fight COVID-19
4. Track People With Face Recognition
When AI and ML-based tools are being used in face recognition, it can be really easy to identify Cornovirus cases. With the help of tracking travel data, local government officials can easily recognize the infected person and send him/her for next-stage screening. Even today, many mobile apps have been built to assist people to check if they have taken the same bus/flight/train as virus patients detected. Facial recognition technology can perfectly identify people even if they wear a mask.
5. IoT for Patient Care
In some hospitals, biometric measurements like a heartbeat and blood pressure measurements are done using some wearable. They are using even some wireless equipment on patients for seamless central monitoring. It helps healthcare professionals to scrutinize a massive number of patients with minimal workforce. In short, IoT solutions can be utilized to boost up the efficiency of the medical experts along with reducing the exposure of medical staff to infections.
Winding Up
In a nutshell, when smart connected IoT solutions are employed with various technologies during outbreaks like COVID-19, it can help authorities or entire countries in alleviating the consequences of this kind of emergencies in a better way.