How the Internet of Things can Help in Fighting Virus Outbreaks

COVID – 19 Aka Corona virus is the talk of the world as within much lesser time it has spread to more than 130,000 people over 120 countries. The time span is as shorter as 50 days. Though the virus is not as fatal as Ebola or SARS virus, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the corona virus (COVID – 19) as a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. 
COVID – 19 faces critical issues including identifying the origin or that first patent (patent zero), trying to reducing the spread of the virus by adopting necessary steps, setting up the infrastructure to treat all the infected patients especially those with severe symptoms. 

The critical situation for a pandemic virus 

The rapid spread of COVID – 19 has exposed to a larger scale, creating severe structural issues in many governmental health response systems. One of the major problems is lack of awareness and infrastructure as this is the new kind of virus nobody was aware of before. Another problem is its expansion, over such a small period it covered more than 60% of the living space of the world. 
Tremendous human resource is required to harness the problem. For quarantining infected patients to treating severely affected patients is a daunting job. Moreover, there is a chance of cross infections among patients and staffs. The governments cannot manage to find a considerable amount of medical staffs who are ready to take care of the COVID -  19 patients. 

Can the solution be easily manageable? Is there anything IoT can do?

IoT or Internet of Things is nothing but an automated solution which can operate various machines together with its effectivity and strong communication power. Various industries like manufacturing, transport, education, health etc. have already using IoT for seamless management and operation. 
Various functional components of IoT are: 

• Data collection
• Transfer 
• Analytics
• Storage 

The wireless IoT sensors collect all the data through mobile phones, laptop, robots, monitors or other receiving devices. 

Application of IoT in Harnessing COVID – 19

IoT has the power to manage COVID – 19 by spreading awareness and continuous surveillance. Already drones are using in various places to check the status of various target groups. IoT devices are also using it to check the health conditions of quarantine patients. The devices can also help in spotting future outbreak areas. 
The devices can check the wearing mask status and will notify when to change your mask. 

Dissecting outbreak using IoT

IoT has huge potential to communicate through connected devices. The devices can be used to locate the exact point of origin. You can also get GIS information about the affected patients. Epidemiologists can their help to search patient zero. 

To Ensure Compliance 

For ensuring patient compliance IoT devices can be used. Public health monitor can use them to detect the quarantined patients. With the IoT data, they can track down who is still exposed to the breach. 

For Patient Care    

With handy monitoring systems connected to central monitoring, device high risked patents can be taken care of. In the current scenario, without having proper infrastructure, the doctors need to check the health conditions of the patients manually. But the health care personalities don’t have to visit door-to-door if they get all the data regarding the patient’s health via a mobile application. 

From body temperature to other details can easily be tracked through temperature sensor applications. The patients will be required to upload all the data collected through the app, evaluating them the health personals will suggest cure and further treatment. The overall situation will be automated. All the data collected through the devices will be stored to cloud storage for future research. It will also harness the scenario of cross-infection, which is one of the significant reasons for the rapid spread of the disease. 
For working staffs service over hours, these IoT devices can be such a relief. If you are dealing with an in-home patient, these devices will ease up your manual labour and surveillance hours. So IoT devices are performing a dual role by increasing efficiency and decreasing manual working hour. 
To Sum-up With 

The health care system can leverage the power of the Internet of Things to collect data, process them and to communicate with the patients. These real-time data can help in strengthening the current system that is severely affected by the corona virus.