How Digital Health Technology Can Help Manage The Coronavirus Outbreak

“Chinese health authorities say an outbreak of a pneumonia-like illness has sickened 305 people and killed five”…  No, this is not an excerpt from a recent news report about the Wuhan virus, but it is actually one from a CNN piece from 2003 when the SARS outbreak was raging. There are many similarities between the current outbreak to the SARS one from its geolocation to its spread to the viruses themselves.  However, much has changed within the 17 year gap between those two pandemics. For one, technology in the healthcare sector has known an exponential boom. New technologies that were nonexistent or poorly developed in 2003 are now more affordable and widespread and can help manage and even prevent such cases. Let’s see how this can be the case. What is the Wuhan virus? First identified in the city of Wuhan, hence the name, the Wuhan virus is a member of the family of coronaviruses which can cause mild conditions like the common cold to potentially lethal ones like the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS. The novel 2019-nCoV strain found in Wuhan has been found to be closely linked to those found in bats, and could have initially spread in the Huanan seafood wholesale market where live animals are sold and slaughtered. However, China has confirmed human-to-human transmission, akin to the flu, and hence its rapid spread globally. This is more so given the fact that the outbreak happened during the Lunar New Year season, when 3 billion ...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Artificial Intelligence Future of Medicine digital health digital technology epidemics global health coronavirus Source Type: blogs