How ICT helps us fight infectious diseases

To react to COVID-19, which is spreading worldwide, various IT companies and experts are coming forward. They are supporting studies aimed at relieving the anxieties of citizens, preventing the spread of infections, and treating COVID-19. We have reviewed global ICT use cases that attempt to overcome the current crisis and ensure our safety.

 

 

Medical AI platforms that shine through in the medical industry

Technologies that predict or diagnose diseases or develop treatment methods using AI are attracting a great deal of attention. Bluedot, Canada’s AI-based health monitoring platform startup, made the headlines by forecasting the spread of COVID-19 earlier than the WHO’s announcement. When the Ebola virus broke out in 2014, the company had also predicted key areas into which Ebola would spread.
Google announced its plan to employ medical AI AlphaFold to develop a COVID-19 treatment. AlphaFold is used to develop new drugs with an algorithm that predicts 3D structures of proteins from their amino-acid sequences. Based on the AI’s excellent ability to analyze big data, this system can speed up development of cures because it can identify new drug candidate substances that are effective for inhibiting and eliminating viruses. Various other AI technologies are also being applied worldwide to overcome the COVID-19 crisis.

 

 

The development of diagnostic and treatment techniques through AI simulations is an area that will stimulate continuous future research. Certainly, though AI made small achievements in certain fields of cancer diagnosis, it is hard to say that AI can also develop treatments for COVID-19 immediately. Unlike diagnostic technology, treatment and prevention technologies involve a lot of challenges in themselves.

 

 

Robots and 5G prevent the spread of infectious diseases and deal with labor shortages

To prevent infectious diseases, robots that provide “untact” services, which can minimize human contact and aid in labor shortages, are playing an active role. At New York City’s Times Square, an autonomous service robot “Promobot” appeared, which enables passersby to check whether they are infected or not by themselves using a questionnaire or Q&A. China has introduced self-driving delivery services, robot-based dining cars, surveillance drones, security robots, and disinfection robots. However, these products have been put into actual sites without undergoing verification stages, and thus leave the developmental task of securing reliability.

 

 

Moves to use 5G-based smart medical technology are also being detected. Alibaba’s healthcare platform ALiHealth is offering free telemedicine services. Chine Telecom is also helping medical professionals who are over 1,000km away from one another to hold high-definition video conferences. As a start, SK telecom is striving to build a digitally innovative hospital using its 5G network with Yonsei University Medical Center. With the installation of SK telecom’s AI speaker NUGU in hospital rooms, patients who have mobility difficulties can control indoor devices via verbal orders or promptly talk with nursing stations over the phone in emergency situations. In addition, the adoption of various ICTs is underway, including quantum cryptography, AR, and facial recognition.

 

 

 

ICT prevents secondary infections by providing real-time information

 

Technologies aimed at relieving the dread of infectious diseases in daily life and preventing secondary infections are also receiving attention. Applications (hereinafter apps) and Web services that provide related information in real time have begun to emerge. In Korea, various apps are currently utilized, including the Corona Map and apps for notifications or alert services that inform about cases and whereabouts of confirmed patients, finding public masks (in stock) sellers, and COVID-19 self-diagnosis.

 

 

Smartphone location tracking services of mobile operators are used to identify movements of confirmed patients. Particularly, based on the information provided by mobile operators including SK telecom, the government identifies the number of people who have been in contact with confirmed patients, their detailed whereabouts, etc. through epidemiological surveys and apply this data to block infections. In addition, “Geovision”, which is SK telecom’s big data-based real-time floating population analysis service, is currently offered to the police for free in order to assist them in their responses to the spread of COVID-19.

 

Meanwhile, SK innovation and SK telecom are implementing online recruitment to hire talent while preventing the spread of COVID-19. SK innovation has replaced offline interviews with video conferences and introduced a chatbot that automatically answers to applicants’ questions. SK telecom also plans to adopt video interviews and hold an online recruitment fair.
How will the future unfold? Answers such as “biotechnology research becomes energetic” and “the importance of risk management systems increases” were already presented in SARS-related reports in 2003. However, they were forgotten after the crisis. The trend of automation using robots, AI, and 5G networks is likely to continue for a while. Moreover, these technologies are projected to become our normal routine in the future. This is because they are not to be disposed of after a temporary use, but rather, should be learned from to cope with possible future crises.