Modern innovative technology has many faces. It is a highly digital environment that can help you do things faster and achieve goals. But in the recent Covid-19 crisis, the trending innovative technologies have shown their true potential in the real world.
In this blog, we have highlighted some innovative technologies that helped the world in fighting the Covid battle even before the vaccination was introduced.
You might have heard of these technologies in the trending digital innovation context. But here these are in the healthcare operations and winning at it too.
Innovative Technologies that Helped Win the COVID-19 Battle
1. Wearable Tech to the Rescue
Wearable technology has made great waves in the field of fitness. Every so often we see this tech linking to one or another fitness campaign that we just cannot overlook.
But in the pandemic, wearable technology was thought to be of no use. Known mostly for tracking physical activity the Fitbit bands were rendered useless in March 2020 when the world imposed a global lockdown.
A report shows an all-time low in physical activity at this time period. But in the recent past, it has not only been an innovative technology for fitness but has also emerged as a significant role player in healthcare during the Covid-19 crisis.
US care homes utilized the wearable technology from CarePredict to monitor contact between patients during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Tempo bracelets from CarePredict were used as a call button for calling medical staff. It also acted as a digital room key for no contact entry, and a health and activity tracker.
These wearable bands used infrared light to connect to beacons on a wall in each room. They created a full record of who has been near whom in the facility and for how long.
2. Telecommunications for Awareness
Telecommunication is a technology that never got the fair share of credit that it deserves. Being the world’s largest communication platform, telecom was among the most used tech for Covid awareness.
How do you ask? Telecommunication played an important role in spreading the coronavirus message across India. During the early breakout of the virus, a majority of the population did not even know what was going on around the world.
That is when the telecommunication department took matters into its hands and played Covid-19 awareness messages and prevention techniques as a 30-second caller tune instead of the normal ringtone.
This seemingly small step acted as a great weapon in spreading awareness about the global pandemic among billions of phone users.
3. AI for Treatment Identification
Artificial intelligence has been an emerging and innovative technology for several years now. Year after year we see it among the top trending technologies list and it never goes wrong.
As artificial intelligence is ever-evolving, we will get to see much more of the wonders that it is capable of.
The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare is not new. For several years we have been seeing one or another breakthrough in the medical industry using this technology.
But first, let’s talk about how this trending tech helped in the pandemic. Nuritas, a biotech company from Europe, revolutionized the tech by using it in discovering the antiviral peptides for Covid treatments.
The company used a robust combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to identify key peptides for testing. Not only did this cut the research process short but also increased efficacy while the world was still eagerly waiting for the Covid vaccination.
Want to learn about how AI will look in the future? Read our guide to gain in-depth insights on the future of AI.
4. X-Ray Scans for Covid Detection
X-ray scans have been a medical holy grail for the longest time. But the pandemic showed us how the crisis can help in motivating humans to improve technology and take advantage of it.
As the covid-19 infections surged in March-April 2020, one such team of doctors came out with an innovative way of using X-rays as a way of covid detection.
As Covid infections increased across Europe and the United States in 2020, doctors came up with brilliant software for chest scans through X-rays. This innovative technology again leveraged the artificial intelligence database of X-ray scans and neural networks.
It was trained in such a way that trained that it could differentiate chest congestion of the patients of pneumonia and tuberculosis, and tell them apart from COVID-19. The software could do so with 98% classification accuracy.
5. Blockchain for Claim-Sharing
Blockchain technology is yet again an innovative technology that has been soaring high for the past several years. In the recent past with the surge in cryptocurrencies, this technology has yet again gained a place as a top trending tech.
Besides that, it also is being heavily used in mobile app development for crypto. But is there a way that it could have been used in the medical industry?
We know that Blockchain applications have the potential to monitor disease outbreaks over time. This can be done through ‘ledgers’ that are both secure and can be updated several times every day.
Also, Blockchain is known for its accuracy and can be used to improve diagnostic accuracy and treatment effectiveness, and track drug and medical supplies among other uses. Blockchain can also be used to update and manage medical data and identify patterns of disease symptoms.
One of the use cases of blockchain technology was Ant Financial’s online mutual aid platform, Xiang Hu Bao, in Wuhan, China. A blockchain-based collective claim-sharing platform that was used to process Covid-19 insurance claims.
It not only reduced paperwork and thus reduced the overall risk of human contact, but also let everyone monitor the entire process.
Blockchain is going places in the fintech industry in Singapore. Read out the guide on why Singapore is facing strong domination of blockchain in Fintech.
Conclusion
Although the world is still fighting the Covid battle, one thing that we cannot overlook is that it showed us the potential of technology in healthcare. There were several technologies that came out as the shining stars even before the vaccination was discovered.
There were several technologies that came out as the shining stars even before the vaccination was discovered. Be it mobile applications or wearable technology, innovative technologies will always rescue humans.
If you are someone who is fiddling with an idea of any such mobile application that can help fight Covid-19 or any other healthcare crisis, now is the time to act on it.
Looking to integrate innovative technologies into your business? Our digital product design agency can help you build a market-fit digital product,
