Day by day new cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19) are growing rapidly at astounding rates worldwide; over 55.1M people have been infected with Coronavirus, among them 35.4M people have recovered worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared this as a pandemic. This instant burst of cases requires organizations like WHO to have access to very important sources of knowledge and information. There’s an immediate need to save and store great quantities of data from these cases using different data storage technology. This data is utilized to undertake development and research concerning the management of the virus and the pandemic. In this blog post, we will be discussing how big data can help in the fight against Coronavirus (COVID-19).
But first, let us define Data and Big data in short…
What’s Data?
Data is the quantities, symbols, and characters on which operations are operated by a computer, which can store and transfer it in the form of electrical signals and recorded on optical, magnetic, or mechanical recording media.
What is Big Data?
Big data is an advanced technology that can digitally store a great number of informations. It can help to computationally examine to show patterns, trends, institutions, and gaps. In addition, it can help in showing insights into the spread and management of the Coronavirus. With comprehensive data shooting capability, large data may be properly used medicinally to lessen the probability of spreading this virus.
Big Data is a phrase used to refer to a group of information that’s substantial in quantity and is continuing to rise exponentially with time. In summary, such information is so big and complicated that none of the conventional data management tools have the ability to keep it or process it economically.
How Big Data Can Help in Fighting Against Coronavirus (COVID-19)?
Scientists and medical professionals require unprecedented information sharing and collaboration to understand COVID-19 and produce a proper cure to end the pandemic.
Although fever and cough have been considered as the most common symptoms of Coronavirus. Researchers and medical professionals have published a study that loss of taste and smell were the first symptoms to predict that a person could be infected. That insight came from data shared with millions of people who reported through different phone apps, or any other media. Scientists are extracting a huge amount of data to anticipate Coronavirus outbreaks particularly in communities and to research different risk factors for the illness.
Read More: Online Data Science Courses During Covid-19 Crisis
As well as the researchers, there are many other organizations who are working with the massive amount of health data being generated by this pandemic. Since the pandemic spread throughout the world, scientists have begun to aggregate large datasets that could be parsed with artificial intelligence. Though some groups, like those supporting the symptom tracker apps, have benefited from the aid of the people, others are relying upon collaboration from research associations that may otherwise compete with each other.
How Big data analytics will work as a medium for monitoring, controlling, preventing, and research of COVID-19?
Big data will diversify production, improve vaccine development, and enhance the knowledge of the pattern of Coronavirus with complete understanding. Organized data provides better analysis and insights with the variables resulting in better containment of those infected COVID-19 patients. China suppressed the COVID-19 with the support of information collection and implementing it using AI leading to a minimal rate of spread. There are numerous large data elements to this particular outbreak where AI may play a substantial part such as in biomedical research, natural language processing, social networking, and mining the science expedition.
The surgical specialization of Orthopaedics necessitates exceptional surgical skills, clinical acumen, sensible physical strength, and improved knowledge. As a complement to such requirements, new technology (e.g., AI) have been adopted in the past couple of decades, which has helped to produce innovations in the area of Orthopaedics and has also given favorable influence from the treatment and operation. Substantial adjustments and inventions are possible with the support of new technologies including big data, AI, and 3D printing. These technologies give the opportunity for better service and the best patient outcomes.
In certain areas, big data provides advice to identify the suspected cases of the virus. It can help to give an efficient method to protect against the disease and extract additional invaluable details. In the long run, big data will assist the people, physicians, other health care professionals, and researchers to monitor this virus and also analyze the disease mechanism. Data supplied help to analyze how this disease may be slowed or finally averted and help optimize the allocation of assets and consequently leading to taking timely and appropriate decisions. With the guidance of the digital information storing technology, physicians and scientists may also create a convenient and effective system of COVID-19 testing.
How to Secure Patient Data
Since the data includes information such as places and dates essential to monitor the outbreak, scientists and medical professionals required to develop security plans to protect patient privacy. To begin with, data is put in a safe enclave, meaning it cannot be downloaded or eliminated from its server. In reality, it cannot even be seen directly by the majority of the researchers utilizing it. Rather, they need to program software that could analyze the data and give answers.
Read More: How Big Data Can Help in Fighting Against Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Usage of Mobile App for Contact Tracing
In Europe and America, privacy concerns for people are of larger concern than they’re in China, nevertheless, medical research workers and bioethics specialists understand the ability of technologies to encourage contact tracing in a pandemic. Oxford University’s Big Data Institute worked together with government officials to decipher the advantages of a mobile app that could provide invaluable data to get an integrated Coronavirus management plan. Since almost half of Coronavirus, transmissions happen before symptoms occur, efficacy, and speed to alert individuals that might have been vulnerable are overriding during a pandemic like Coronavirus. A mobile app can accelerate the notification process while preserving ethics to slow down the speed of infection.
Tech innovators had worked on alternatives to efficiently track and monitor the spread of Flu. In the USA, the authorities are in conversations with technology giants like Facebook, Google, and others to determine what is potential and moral in terms of using location data from Americans’ smartphones to monitor movements and comprehend routines.
Dashboards from Officials to Track and Outbreak Analytics
Another tool that’s been useful for private citizens, authority policy-makers, and health care professionals to find the development of contagion and also to develop models of how invasive this virus will be are dashboards from organizations like the World Health Organization that offer real-time statistics. These stats show the data around the world in terms of confirmed cases and deaths from Coronavirus and locations. These dashboard data sets can then be utilized to predict red zones for the pandemic so you can make decisions to stay home and help healthcare systems prepare for a surge of cases.
Outbreak Information carries all available information, including the number of verified cases, deaths, and tracing contacts of infected individuals, population densities, maps, traveler stream, and much more, then processes it via machine learning enabling the user to make models of this illness. These models represent the very best predictions concerning summit infection rates and results.
[Case Study] How Big Data Analytics Succeed in Taiwan
As Coronavirus rapidly spread in China, it had been presumed that Taiwan will be greatly hit in part due to its proximity to China. In addition to the flights which moved from Taiwan to China daily, and the number of Taiwanese citizens works in China. But, Taiwan utilized technology plus a strong pandemic plan created following the 2003 SARS epidemic to minimize the virus effect on its territory.
Part of their approach integrated the federal medical insurance policy database with data from its own immigration and customs database. By centralizing the information in this way, when confronted with Coronavirus, they were able to receive real-time alarms regarding who may be infected according to symptoms and travel history. Along with this, they had QR code scan and internet reporting of traveling and health symptoms that aided them to classify travelers’ infection risks and also a toll-free hotline for citizens to report suspicious symptoms. The authorities took quick action when they got the first reported case of Coronavirus, and Taiwan’s rapid response and application of technologies would be the probable reason they have a lower rate of infection than others regardless of their proximity to China.
Bottom Line
Technology is essential in the struggle against Coronavirus and any other potential pandemics. Along with Big data, machine learning, and other advanced technology, data can quickly and efficiently analyze to assist people on the frontlines to find out the ideal management of the pandemic.
If you want to learn more about technologies like big data, machine learning, AI, and other trendy tools contact our experience Big Data team for further information on available training and consulting services.
