The Emerging Role of IoT in COVID-19 Response

The world today is experiencing an anomalous situation. Even particularly, IoT technology is playing an emerging role in supporting authorities to prevent further spread of COVID-19, while also treating those that are unfortunately already infected. IoT specifically when integrated with other transformative technologies such as a Cloud and AI, has seen usage in a huge range of applications during the epidemic. The broad effect of COVID-19 on the Internet of Things market has assumed to grow from USD 150 billion in 2020 to USD 243 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 13.7% during the forecast period.

This technology would not just cut the cost by the integrity of the reduction in human effort, but with the IoT and Edge Computing, as experienced from the COVID-19 crisis, would allow business continuity without human physical presence. Let’s see how IoT technology can be utilized to slow down the expansion of pandemics and avoid a future global health crisis.

Quarantine Observation with Smart Cellular IoT Wristbands

The common population can wear smart IoT wristbands as a health monitor. With significance on the small size and long battery life, Cellular IoT provides definitive connectivity for smart wristbands, with autarchy from paired smartphones. Recently, the Hong Kong Government has introduced smart wristbands to monitor city residents to quarantined themselves. A crucial step to control the spread of COVID-19 is the efficient quarantine of infected people and remote monitoring health of citizens.

So, now industries and corporations are moving towards the IoT to track and control infected people’s movements. Hong Kong initiated its quarantine efforts from the airport. Passengers were given wrist-bands along with a specific QR to track their movements. Passengers downloaded an app on their smartphones and scanned that unique QR.

The key technology is Geofencing, where a virtual perimeter is generated utilizing GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular network.

Pre-Screening

Using AI and ML-based tools, it is easy to recognize Coronavirus cases. Though, by tracking travel data, local officials are able to identify the infected person and send him for further screening. Many mobile apps have been built to assist people to check if they have taken the same train or flight as virus patients detected. AI utilizes an Event-based surveillance system that holds unstructured data from various sources, including social media, the internet as well as official reports, to track and realize the confirmation of the threat.

Chinese authorities utilize Healthmap, an EBS tool that utilizes Natural Language Processing, Text Processing, and Machine Learning. COVID-19’s data apprehension by Healthmap presents the system of colored dots. The yellow color appeared by Healthmap which means less than 10 cases have been described in a specific location, whereas dark shades of orange display higher concentrations of infections. Red color dots reveal that more than 50 people have been infected.

Many software companies did tie up with hospitals and medical centers to place up chatbots on their website and mobile apps. These chatbots ask a number of questions to screen visitors as per the strength of their conditions. In this way, the doctors as well as medical staff don’t need to answer the same questions over and over. They can instead utilize this time to treat more patients.

Cleaning and Disinfecting

Many Hospitals are placing IoT buttons, which are battery operated as well as connected via LTE-M that will send alerts to the management about the risks to public safety. Facility managers can easily track alerts and staff response times and analyze scheduled cleaning rotations in the highest prone areas.

Various companies like TMiRob and Xenex Disinfection Services have taken the initialization of using self-driving robots for this task. These robots disinfect the surfaces by releasing high-intensity ultraviolet light, which demolishes the virus by grabbing apart their DNA. They are especially Wi-Fi-based and can be accessed and controlled via IoT mobile apps.

Aerial Thermography Using Drones

Aerial thermography contains both an unmanned aerial device as well as an infrared camera scanning. Drones are also utilized to sprinkle disinfecting chemicals in public spaces and on vehicles traveling between prone areas.

On the other side, drones are also provided with thermal camera scanners to recognize the temperatures of people to break the chain of the spread of the Corona Virus. Drones are being used by authorities to identify the body temperature of the huge crowds and sending their information which was stored on the cloud to health officials so that further treatments could be started efficiently.

Minimizing In-Home Infections

There is an improving awareness among people to stay away from touching exposed surfaces like light switches, doorknobs, etc. Instead, they utilize IoT enabled Smart Lock, lights, etc. With the help of smart door locks users can easily access lock without touching it and it can also be operated remotely. People are now using Amazon Alexa or the Google Assistant smart speaker IoT devices to control a smart home. Turning lights/TV on or off, dimming the lights, opening or closing blinds are some of the things that we can done without directly handling home appliances.

As per the report of Forrester Research, before the COVID-19 crisis, near about 7% of IoT solutions were in the Smart Healthcare field in the Asia Pacific region.

• Connected Wearables are having an essential role too. Patients and staff at a field hospital wore bracelets and rings concurred with an AI platform to give constant monitoring of vital signs, involving temperature, heart rate, and blood oxygen levels. The government of Hong Kong is utilizing electronic tracker wristbands to alert officials when individuals—particularly those currently arrived from international destinations—do not follow with compulsory home quarantines.

• Robots are also being utilized to reduce the stress on healthcare workers and help in the treatment of patients. At the facility, 5G connected robots distributed food, drinks and medication to patients. In addition to giving a much-needed break to staff, the utilization of the robots limits the healthcare workers’ vulnerability to infected patients.

Robots from companies like UVD Robots and Xenex Disinfection Services are also being utilized to sterilize hospitals and other prone locations in Italy and the US.

This huge range of use cases specifies that IoT is an integral part of the answer in resolving the unique challenges presented by COVID-19. The part of technology in the fight against COVID19 will be vital and innovation will certainly be at the cutting edge of this transformation.

With such technologies, companies can allow themselves to act instead of reacting to such conditions in the future.