How IoT Can Help to Protect Frontline Health Workers Amid COVID-19

Health workers are at the forefront of any pandemic response and are exposed to the difficulty that puts them at risk of infection with an outbreak pathogen. Nowadays we are going through an unusual crisis, during this healthcare workers have appeared as frontline heroes, working 24/7 to protect our communities from the spread of coronavirus. But the health workers aren’t secure against the outbreak because of the exotic atmosphere the pandemic has.

It is important to protect the first responders and hospital staff who put their welfare on the line to help the communities during a crisis. That means using every tool at our allocation to the fullest — with IoT is vital among those at hand. Survey shows that up to 10% of health workers are getting infected by COVID-19, said by the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General. But one of the most optimistic technologies in healthcare is the IoT, which supports to optimize the working processes of both doctors as well as service providers. Let’s see how exactly IoT supports medical workers and how IoT can help us during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Remote Patient Monitoring

Another mode of IoT and artificial intelligence technology can be applied by medical facilities to protect medical staff and carefully analyze patients. With IoT applications in healthcare, Telemedicine and telehealthcare are sizing up the potential of healthcare systems in analyzing and caring patients.

Remotely, people can upload their temperatures, give information about existing infirmities to cloud storage from an app on their smartphone and health care professionals can easily access this uploaded data, diagnose and give assistance with the help of Live-video Calling. Another robust form of AI technology is remote monitoring, which is being prompted by medical facilities to guard the workforce and thoroughly analyze patients even in hospital’s dormitories. This technology not only minimizes the medical professional’s disclosure to the virus and risk of infection but also benefits patients by enhancing the quality of health care.

Automation of Administrative Tasks

IoT-enabled devices accumulate and analyze huge volumes of information. By doing so, they support to optimize the workflow of medical workers. These IoT devices rapidly create several measures reflecting the patients’ progress, which automatically saves doctors’ time and direct contact with the patient. Also, they support making more accurate diagnoses as they store huge data about the patient’s condition. By monitoring the data, specialists can give personalized recommendations for a specific patient. Also, smart devices can instantly recognize precise changes in the condition and send the information to a doctor before the first symptoms emerge out.

Evaluate AI’s Capability to Limit Disease Transmission

Let’s take an example of a screening system that was recently placed at Tampa General Hospital in Florida. This AI framework was structured to assist early identification and interruption of infected people before they come into contact with others. As per a report from the Wall Street Journal, this framework monitors into entryway cameras and conducts a facial thermal scan. If the system recognizes any fevered symptoms such as sweat or discoloration, it can inform healthcare staff and prompt instant intervention.

Few other companies such as Microsoft have also rolled out similar remote diagnostic and alert tools in facilities across the globe. Their unique abilities may vary, but their aims are the same: to prevent the spread of infection and provide support to our health workers.

Applications for Diagnostics and Patient Management

Fighting against a pandemic is a big task that requires speed. It is important to precisely and quickly recognizes infected patients so that they can be trace and it will easy to prevent the spread of the virus. But doing so isn’t an easy and quick order.
Recently a Forbes contributor Wendy Singer said that “Monitoring test results nowadays need skilled technicians and a lot of valuable time, as much as a few days. But in our present reality, healthcare systems require to monitor thousands of results immediately and to expose as few lab workers as possible to the outbreak pathogen.”

In the current situation, we don’t have that much time and we can’t put lab workers at extreme risk. Cutting-edge AI technologies may give a solution. With the help of AI, hospitals can automate some procedures of the testing process that will cut down on the time and effort required to process test results. Since the start of this epidemic, the health tech start-up Diagnostics.ai has given laboratories in the US and UK with a diagnostic tool that simplified the testing process by automating DNA analysis.

Applications of AI diagnostics are not only testing but it is also used to manage patients in overstretched hospitals. One Israeli medical-device developer recently developed an AI-enabled sensor that can recognize which patients will most likely face difficulties such as asepsis and respiratory failure within six to eight hours. This can provide a hospital the information it requires to best allocate limited resources and staff attention.

Real-Time Monitoring

The spread of infections is the biggest concern for patients in hospitals. IoT-enabled hygiene monitoring devices support in preventing patients from getting infected. Wearable AR, MR and IoT Technology enable health workers to stay hands-free while acknowledging emergencies. With the help of this technology, emergency medical teams and first responders can approach critical life-saving data and interface with emergency rooms and command centers in real-time.

Real-time functionality enables medical experts on the scene to stream what they are seeing directly to a remote physician, get live feedback and instructions while remaining hands-free and concentrated on giving critical care to patients.

The IoT application in healthcare is not restricted by the use cases described above. And these days, when doctors and medical workers risk their lives to fight against the epidemic, all these smart devices are the biggest asset for them.

Likewise, hIOTron has developed a Non-Contact Infrared Thermometer to help organizations to control the spread of the virus.