Goa Ministry of Health introduces its App( Test Yourself Goa) to fight Coronavirus-India’s First Automated Self-evaluation Assessment to Identify At-Risk Patients for COVID-19.SARS coronavirus 2, which is causing the Covid-19 disease, has brought the world and its estimated 7.8-billion populations to its knees. Technology for Coronavirus are  as follows— big data, cloud computing, supercomputers, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 3D printing, thermal imaging and 5G—are being used to effectively complement the traditional methods of increased hygiene, self- and forced quarantines, and enforced global travel bans.

Robots 

•  Self-driving Danish disinfection robots ere supplied to over 2,000 hospitals in China to help fight Covid-19.With ultraviolet light, the Danish robot can disinfect and kill viruses and bacteria autonomously, effectively limiting the spread of coronavirus without exposing hospital staff to the risk of infection.
• Robots delivered medication, patrolled and cleaned infected areas, led patients in exercises, and even performed robo-dances to entertain bored quarantined patients at the Wuhan Wuchang Hospital in China, according to an 18 March CNBC report.
• This, even as 5G-powered temperature measurement devices flagged patients with fever symptoms at the entrance of the smart hospital that was jointly built by telecom carrier China Mobile and a communications company China Potevio Co.

Thermal Scanners:

•  Police officers in China  wear AI-powered helmets that can automatically record the temperatures of pedestrians.The high-tech headgear has an infrared camera, and sounds an alarm if anyone in a radius of 16ft has fever. Equipped with the facial-recognition technology, it can also display the pedestrian’s personal information, such as their name on a virtual screen.
• Officials at railway stations, airports and in other public areas in India, too, are using smart thermal scanners to record temperatures from a distance, thus helping in identifying potential coronavirus carriers.

3D Printers (Technology for Coronavirus)

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. 3D printing encompasses a wide range of additive manufacturing technologies. Each of these builds objects in successive layers that are typically about 0.1 mm thin. The methods used vary significantly, but all start with a computer aided design (CAD) model or a digital scan.

• Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing as it is better known, is also coming to the aid of medical workers to combat Covid-19. A 3D printing company in Italy, Isinnova, used a 3D printer to redesign a Venturi valve early this month.
• Italy is battling one of the world’s worst outbreak of coronavirus outside of China. These valves connect oxygen masks to respirators used by coronavirus patients suffering from respiratory complications.

AI-Artificial Intelligence( Technology for Coronavirus)-

• Machine- and deep-learning, subsets of AI, can sift through mountains of data and make very good predictions subject to the data being good.
• Healthmap scrapes information about new outbreaks from online news reports, chatrooms and more, and is being used to track Covid-19 in real-time
• Developed shortly after the SARS outbreak, Healthmap organizes disparate data and generates visualizations that show how and where communicable diseases like the coronavirus are spreading.
• University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) researchers have developed a portable surveillance device powered by machine learning. Called FluSense, it can detect coughing and crowd sizes in real time, then analyse the data to monitor flu-like illnesses and influenza trends such as the Covid-19 pandemic or SARS.The FluSense platform comprises a microphone array (multiple microphones), Raspberry Pi (credit-card sized computer that plugs into a monitor or TV, and uses a standard keyboard and mouse), neural computing stick (using deep neural networks to draw inferences from data) and thermal camera (to detect temperature by recognizing and capturing different levels of infrared light).
•  FluSense is an example of the power of combining AI with edge computing—a trend that enables data to be gathered and analysed right at the data’s source. The next step is to test FluSense in other public areas and geographic locations.

The App Ecosystem

• Dr Arni S.R. Srinivasa Rao, director of the Laboratory for Theory and Mathematical Modeling in the MCG Division of Infectious Diseases at Augusta University, is developing an AI-powered coronavirus app to enable individuals to get free at-home risk assessment in just about a minute, based on how they feel and where they’ve been or travelled.
• People will not have to wait for hospitals to screen them directly. “We want to simplify people’s lives and calm their concerns by getting information directly to them.” Once the app is ready, it will go live on the augusta.edu domain and likely in app stores on the iOS and Android platforms.
• The app will also ask users to fill in details about common symptoms of infection and their duration, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, sputum production, headache, diarrhoea and pneumonia. An AI algorithm developed by Rao will, then, rapidly assess the individual’s information, and send them a risk assessment—no risk, minimal risk, moderate or high risk. This, even as it alerts the nearest facility with testing ability that a health check is likely needed. The patient is unable to travel, the nearest facility will be notified of the need for a mobile health check and possible remote testing.

Drug Development( Technology for Coronavirus)

• The real promise of AI, though, appears to be in speeding up the process of designing, testing, and even making potential new drugs.
• The world’s fastest supercomputer, the IBM AC922 Summit, is being used  to identify 77 small-molecule drug compounds that might warrant further study in the fight against Covid-19 disease outbreak the Summit can perform 200 quadrillion calculations each second—roughly a million times more powerful than the average laptop’s computing power.
• A team led by Dr Rolf Hilgenfeld said it has decoded the 3D architecture of the main protease of SARS-CoV-2. Hilgenfeld is an expert in the field of virology and had developed an inhibitor against the SARS virus during the 2002-03 SARS pandemic.I The protease in this case (Mpro, or also 3CLpro) is an enzyme that catalyses proteolysis—the breakdown of proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids. Responsible for replication of the coronavirus, it was decoded using the high-intensity X-ray light from the BESSY II facility of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. The complex shape of the protein molecule and its electron density was then calculated by AI algorithms.
• The function of a protein is closely related to its 3D architecture. Hence, the analysis of the 3D architecture of the special protein will allow systematic development of drugs that can inhibit reproduction of the coronavirus.
• Google-owned DeepMind Technologies, too, released the structure predictions of several proteins associated with Covid-19 on Github this month (5 March). Once we understand a protein’s shape, we can guess its role within the cell, and scientists can develop drugs that work with the protein’s unique shape.The predictions, published in Nature, were done by DeepMind’s deep learning system AlphaFold, thus demonstrating the utility of AI for scientific discovery.

India:Technology for Coronavirus

• Bengaluru-based startup, OneBreath,  has developed affordable, portable ventilators. These are aimed at the rural population in India which lacks adequate access to hospitals and doctors.
• Another Bengaluru-based startup DayToday has just developed a care management solution to keep diagnosed patients engaged at home, in quarantine facilities and hospitals and also cater to post-diagnosis activities such as health checks, diets, follow-up tests, etc.
• This solution reduces the load on the healthcare systems significantly, and keeps healthcare workers from the danger of contracting the infection. On average, 22% of healthcare workers tending to Covid-19 patients contract the infection and, as days pass by, the ratio of patients to doctors and nurses increases exponentially. Such solutions mitigate these issues,” Kolla explained.
• Engineers of Bengaluru-based Vee Technologies and Salem-based Sona College of Technology are developing two apps to aid the cause of detecting Covid-19. While “Corona-Scan” proactively allows public health officials to map individuals who were in close proximity with a possibly infected or active coronavirus patient, the other complementary app.
• Corona-Support” asks the public for voluntary registration. If an individual tests positive, a voluntary status update can be entered in the app, helping health authorities and experts tracking the spread of the virus get accurate information.

• Goa Ministry of Health introduces its App( Test Yourself Goa) to fight Coronavirus-India’s First Automated Self-evaluation  Assessment to Identify At-Risk Patients for  COVID-19.

  The government of Goa has partnered with San Francisco-headquartered Innovaccer Inc. to assist citizens of the state to conduct a self-assessment test for Coronavirus.

  A person will need to fill information on an app based on the symptoms and the solution will assist her to take the next step accordingly without having to physically visit a healthcare facility.

  Announcing launch of the app, Vishwajit Rane, health minister of Goa, in a statement said, “The partnership with Innovaccer is one of the critical elements in our strategy to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Goa and the nation. We are proud to become the first state in India to adopt technology solutions to tackle coronavirus. I appeal to all our citizens to make use of the application to the fullest and take necessary safety measures.”

  Innovaccer is a healthcare data activation platform company focusing on delivering effective healthcare through the use of pioneering analytics, clean and accurate data.

Economic Impact of Coronavirus

Important topics Prelims