Combating COVID-19 Through Emerging Digital Technologies

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a threat not only to the health of millions of population, but also to the stability of global infrastructure and economies. The disease introduced a unavoidable burden on healthcare systems that cannot be efficiently dealt with the existing facilities or responses based on traditional approaches. Mostly, it is believed that a thorough clinical and common response can only be mounted by using intelligence derived from a variety of data sources to better utilize limited healthcare resources, provide personalized patient management plans, inform policy and clinical trials. This paper introduces some of the most important challenges in responding to COVID-19 and shows how each of them can be addressed by recent developments in digital technologies. It concludes that the integration of these techniques into local, national, and international healthcare systems will save lives and propose specific methods by which implementation can happen swiftly and efficiently. The paper also proposes a methodology to detect COVID-19 patients through their radiographs at early stage.