The Science behind the COVID Pandemic and Healthcare Technology Solutions

This book offers a timely review of modern technologies for health, with a special emphasis on wireless and wearable technologies, GIS tools and machine learning methods for managing the impacts of pandemics. It describes new strategies for forecasting evolution of pandemics, optimizing contract tracing, and for detection and diagnosis of diseases, among others. Written by researchers and professionals with different backgrounds, this book offers a extensive information and a source of inspiration for physiologists, engineers, IT scientists and policy makers in the health and technology sector. Foreword by The Series Editor Contents About the Editors Technology-Driven Pandemic Monitoring Applications The Science behind the COVID Pandemic and Healthcare Technology Solutions: An Introduction 1 Section I: Technology-Driven Pandemic Monitoring Applications 2 Section II: Non-Invasive COVID-19 Detection and Diagnostic Systems 3 Section III: Decision-Making Analytics for COVID-19 4 Section IV: Psychological and Educational Interventions of COVID-19 5 Section V: Location Intelligence and Community Resilience in Pandemic Situations 6 Section VI: Future Directions and Roadmaps Pandemic’s Behavior of One Year in Six Most Affected Countries Using Polynomial Generated SIR Model 1 Introduction 2 Mathematical Models 2.1 Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) Model 2.2 Polynomial Fitting Model 2.3 Polynomial Generated SIR (PG-SIR) Model 3 COVID-19 Scenario in Six Countries 3.1 USA 3.2 India 3.3 United Kingdom (UK) 3.4 Russia 3.5 France 3.6 Brazil 3.7 Summary 4 Experimental Results 4.1 Comparative Study 4.2 Next Peak Prediction 5 Conclusions References Digital Contact Tracing for COVID 19: A Missed Opportunity or an Expensive Mess 1 Introduction 2 COVID 19 and Digital Contact Tracing 3 Issues that Have Obscured the Efficacy of Digital Contact Tracing 3.1 Privacy Concerns 3.2 Technological Disparity 3.3 Epidemiological Scrutiny 3.4 Adoption of Tracing Apps 4 Contact Tracing Could Not Be Done Alone 5 Recommendations 6 Conclusion References A Re-configurable Software-Hardware CNN Framework for Automatic Detection of Respiratory Symptoms 1 Introduction 2 Related Work 3 RespiratorNet Framework 4 Experimental Results and Analysis 4.1 Case Study 1: Cough Detection 4.2 Case Study 2: Dyspnea Detection 4.3 Case Study 3: Detection of Respiratory Sound with Demographic Information 5 Hardware Architecture Design 5.1 FPGA Design Flow and Framework 5.2 Effect of Parallelism 5.3 Quantization: Fixed Point Precision Analysis 6 Hardware Implementation and Results 6.1 FPGA Implementation 6.2 NVIDIA Jetson TX2 Implementation 7 Conclusion References A Comprehensive Telemedicine Service in Hong Kong Provided Through a Mobile Application 1 Introduction 2 Smart Hospital Initiatives 3 Utilization of Telecare to Mitigate Service Disruption 4 Medicolegal and Safety Concerns 5 Streamlining Telecare Using a One-Stop Mobile App “HA Go” 6 Future Work in Patient Empowerment Using “HA Go” References Adapting to Live in the Global Pandemic Era: Case Studies 1 Introduction 1.1 What are Some Issues With Apple iPhones? 1.2 Vulnerabilities to Data Interception 1.3 Bluetooth Needs to Be Always on, So Users Should Check Bluetooth Status of Other Apps 1.4 Where Data is Sent to and Stored? 1.5 Use of Apps for Patient Monitoring in Disease Outbreaks 2 Privacy Issues on Social Media Platform Tiktok in Pandemic Era 2.1 What is TikTok? 2.2 What Information Can Be Collected and How are They Transferred? 2.3 The Dark Side of TikTok 2.4 What Features and Information Can Be Accessed by TikTok? 2.5 Where is the Data Stored? 2.6 ByteDance and Its TikTok Server Location 2.7 What Privacy Issues Does TikTok Potentially Have? 2.8 Can the Australian Government Actually Ban TikTok? 3 Health Data for Identification and Authentication 4 Conclusion References Towards QR Code Health Systems Amid COVID-19: Lessons Learnt from Other QR Code Digital Technologies 1 Introduction 1.1 Contribution of the Study 2 Related Work 2.1 Quick Response Code in Healthcare 2.2 Application of Emerging Technologies for QR Code Apps in Healthcare Services Delivery During COVID-19 3 Issues Around the Use of QR Code-Based Apps in Healthcare Service Delivery 4 Ethical Issues Emanating from QR Code-Based Applications 5 Conclusion References Optimal Testing Strategies for Infectious Diseases 1 Introduction 2 Problem Statement 3 Game-Theoretic Formalization 3.1 Solution Concepts 3.2 Evidence-Based Soft Partitioning 4 Weighted Majority Games 4.1 Solution Concepts 4.2 Application to `Checking' Games 5 Sampling, Estimations and Posterior Updates 5.1 Point Statistics and Confidence Intervals 5.2 Evidence-Based Posterior Updates 6 Further Complications in Real-World Testing 7 Conclusions References Contact Tracing for Healthcare Facilities Using Bluetooth 1 Introduction 2 Digital Contact Tracing 3 The Bluetooth Technology 3.1 Bluetooth Low Energy 3.2 Bluetooth Mesh Profile 4 Key Challenges 4.1 Estimation Accuracy 4.2 Device Resources 4.3 Privacy and Security 4.4 Technology Adoption 5 Contact Tracing Architecture 5.1 Performance Results and Discussions 6 Conclusions and Prospected Directions References Non-invasive COVID-19 Detection and Diagnostic Systems Monitoring the Health and Movement of Quarantined COVID-19 Patients with Wearable Devices 1 Introduction 2 Research Method 3 Requirement Elicitation Study 3.1 Participants Profiles 3.2 Study Procedure 3.3 Revealed Requirements 4 Proposed Wearable Device Solution 4.1 System Architecture 4.2 Workflow of the Proposed System 4.3 Prototype Development 5 Evaluating the Prototype 6 Conclusions 7 Example Interview Responses 8 Prototype of User Interfaces 9 Example Questionnaire 9.1 Questions to Patients 9.2 Questions to Doctors 9.3 Questions to Administrative Personals 9.4 Questions to IEDCR Personals References Context-Aware and User Adaptive Smart Home Ecosystems Using Wearable and Semantic Technologies During and Post COVID-19 Pandemic 1 Introduction 2 Smart Home Eco-Systems in Healthcare 2.1 Benefits of Smart Home Eco-Systems in Healthcare 2.2 Challenges in Smart Home Implementations 3 Wearable Health Sensor Technologies in Smart Home Ecosystems 3.1 Architecture 4 Context-Aware and User Adaptive Smart Home Ecosystems 5 Issues in Implementation 5.1 Interoperability 5.2 Connectivity 5.3 Context-Aware Architecture 5.4 Security and Privacy 6 Conclusion References Wearable Tracking: An Effective Smartwatch Approach in Distributed Population Tracking During Pandemics 1 Introduction 2 Background 2.1 Facts & Figures 2.2 Pandemic-Related Health Targets 2.3 Ambient Intelligence 2.4 Internet of Things 3 Healthcare Scenarios 3.1 Self-Health Care and Home-Based Care 3.2 Methodology and Solution Applicability 3.3 Technological Advances in Healthcare 3.4 Limitation 4 Discussion and Conclusion 5 Future Works References Making the Invisible Visible: A Science and Society View of Developing Non-invasive Thermal Technology 1 Introduction 2 Technology and Society in the Covid-19 Context 2.1 Non-Invasive Monitoring and Communication Tools: Pilot Study 3 COVID-19 Monitoring and Communication in a Public Setting 3.1 Provotype Proposal 4 Ethical and Social Implications 4.1 Privacy and Public Health Surveillance 4.2 Social Equity 5 Interdisciplinarity 5.1 Broadening Engineering Ethics 6 Conclusion References Decision-Making Analytics for COVID-19 EMD and Horizontal Visibility Graph Based Disease Tagging for Covid-Positive Chest Radiographs 1 Introduction 2 Related Work 3 Motivation for Building This Tool and Methodology 3.1 Earthmover’s Distance (EMD) 3.2 Horizontal Visibility Graph (HVG) and Its Application for X-ray Chest Radiograph Processing in R 4 Dataset 4.1 Transformation of a Chest Radiograph to a Horizontal Visibility Graph: Different Stage of Processing 4.2 Computational Infrastructure Deployed 5 Experimental Results 5.1 Computational Experiment 6 Final Testing and Automated Disease Tagging for Test Chest Radiographs with EMD 7 Reflections on HVG–HIM and EMD Similarity Metrics 8 Towards a Web-Service Based Implementation 8.1 Webservice Methodology 9 Conclusions and Future Directions 10 Device Utility References Mobility Analytics and COVID-19 in Greece 1 Introduction 2 Coping with Degraded Data Quality and Availability 2.1 Infections, Deaths, Recoveries 2.2 Under-Reporting of Infections (I(t)) 3 Standard Epidemic Modelling: SIR/SEIR 4 Higher-Order and Spectral Modelling 5 Human Activities and Epidemic Spread 6 Correlation of Human Activity with Epidemic Spread 7 Conclusions References Dynamical Modeling of Outbreak and Control of Pandemics: Assessing the Resilience of Healthcare Infrastructure Under Mitigation Policies 1 Introduction 2 Model Overview 2.1 Disease Outbreak 2.2 Hospital Performance 2.3 Vaccine Supply 3 Illustrative Application 3.1 Initialization and Model Calibration 3.2 Experimental Methodology 4 Results 4.1 Enforcing Lockdown 4.2 Vaccination 5 Verification 5.1 Sensitivity Analysis 6 Conclusions References COVID-19 Diagnosis with Artificial Intelligence 1 Introduction 2 A Guideline to Develop AI Models for Diagnosis and Screening 2.1 Training, Testing, and Further Validation of AI Models 2.2 Data Gathering and Soundness 2.3 Data Diversity, the Problem of Batch Effect and Generalization 2.4 Interpreting the Black-Box Deep AI Models 3 State-Of-The-Art AI Technologies for COVID-19 Diagnosis 4 AI and Pandemic 4.1 AI for Status Prediction 4.2 Utilization of AI in Vaccine Discovery 4.3 AI in Controlling the Pandemic 4.4 Wearable Sensors Application in COVID-19 Pandemic 5 Future Directions 5.1 The COVID-19 Pandemic Experience 5.2 Toward a Universal Crowd-Sourcing and Validating Framework for AI Models 6 Conclusion References COVID-19 Features Detection Using Machine Learning Models and Classifiers 1 Introduction 2 Materials and Methods 2.1 Datasets Preparation Phase 2.2 Training Dataset Phase 2.3 Test Dataset Phase 2.4 Prediction and Performance Phase 3 Methodology 3.1 Parameters of Distances Classifier 3.2 Parameters of CN2 Rule Induction Classifier 3.3 Parameters of Random Forest Classifier 3.4 Parameters of Tree Classifier 3.5 Parameters of kNN Classifier 3.6 Parameters of Logistic Regression Classifier 3.7 Parameters of Neural Network Classifier 4 Results and Discussion 4.1 Results from Confusion Matrix 4.2 Results from Linear Projection 4.3 Results from Sieve Diagram 5 Conclusions References Cough Detection Using Mobile Phone Accelerometer and Machine Learning Techniques 1 Introduction 1.1 Cough an Important Biomarker for COVID-19 Identification 1.2 Overview of Cough 1.3 Levels of Cough Severity 1.4 Common Respiratory Diseases 1.5 Different Cough Conditions 2 Literature Review 2.1 Cough Occurrence, Types and Patterns 2.2 Cough Is a Valid Indication of COVID-19 Disease 2.3 Severity of Cough Indicates the Prevalence of Disease 2.4 Cough Represents the Severity of Disease 2.5 Existing Methods for Cough Detection 2.6 Machine Learning Algorithms 3 Research Methodology 3.1 Data Collection of Cough 3.2 Sensor Placement 3.3 Data Processing 3.4 Model Training 4 Results and Discussion 5 Conclusion and Future Work References Psychological and Educational Interventions in COVID-19 Pandemic Mental Healthcare in the ‘New Normal’: Digital Technologies for Pandemics 1 Mental Health During COVID-19 1.1 Vulnerability in Individuals with Pre-Existing Mental Disorders 1.2 Vulnerability in the Healthy Population 2 Digital Approaches for Improving Mental Health in a Pandemic 2.1 Need for Digital Mental Health Tools 2.2 Efficacy and Use of DMH Technologies 3 ‘Stepping Up’ to the Challenge 3.1 A Case Example—Digital Mental Health Applied at a National Level 3.2 Case Study 2—Individual Level 4 Getting Vaccinated—Protecting Against the Mental Health Effects of Pandemics 4.1 Training a DMH Ready Workforce 4.2 Protecting the Mental Health of Our Healthcare Professionals 4.3 Placing Mental Health in a Holistic Framework 5 Conclusions and Future Directions References Innovations in Surgery—How Advances in the Delivery of Surgical Care and Training Can Help Hospitals Recover from COVID-19 1 Introduction 2 Innovations in Surgical Care 2.1 Remote Ward Rounds 2.2 XR Enhanced Multi-Disciplinary Team Meetings and Pre-Operative Planning 2.3 XR Pre-operative Planning and Intra-operative Anatomical Guidance 2.4 XR Intra-Operative Telementoring 2.5 The Rising Role of AI in Surgical Care 2.6 AI in Clinical Diagnostics 2.7 AI in Histopathology 2.8 Current Limitations of AI Technology 3 Innovations in Surgical Training and Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) 3.1 Acquisition of Surgical Skills 3.2 Remote Teaching Ward Rounds 3.3 Acquisition of Clinical and Anatomical Knowledge 3.4 Emergency Skills 3.5 VR Assessment of Surgical Performance 3.6 AI Autonomous Assessment of Surgical Performance 3.7 VR Surgical Training in the Developing World 3.8 VR Surgical Training Improves Patient Safety 3.9 Limitations of TEL and XR Training Modalities 4 Conclusion References A Biomarker-Based Model to Assist the Identification of Stress in Health Workers Involved in Coping with COVID-19 1 Introduction 2 Health Workers and Occupational Stress 3 Biomarkers 3.1 Biomarkers for Stress Identification 3.2 Parameters for Measurement 4 Biomarker-Based Model Recommender System 4.1 Internet of Things 4.2 Stress Classification 4.3 Recommendation Systems with Deep Learning 5 Conclusion References The Experience of Diagnosis and Management of Oral Maxillofacial Surgery, and Dental Education During the Pandemic 1 The Importance of Technology in Dental Education During the Pandemic 1.1 Lectures/Problem Based Learning 1.2 Dedicated Applications 1.3 Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality 1.4 Final Considerations 2 The Experience of Diagnosis and Management of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Patients During COVID-19 Pandemic 2.1 Intern Education of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery 2.2 Triage of Patients 2.3 Admission Protocol 2.4 Patient Management During Hospital Admission 2.5 Personal Protection of Healthcare Personnel 2.6 Healthcare Facilities Area Division and Management 2.7 Management of Patients’ Follow-Up and Review Visits 2.8 Case Discussion References Location Intelligence and Community Resilience in Pandemic Situations Digitizing Pandemic Response Operations: The Experiences from a Small Island Nation 1 Introduction 2 Business Process and Information/Data Flow 3 Concept and Schema of the Outbreak System 4 Utility of the Digitized Operations System 5 Lessons and Experiences 6 Opportunities and Recommendations References Resilience to COVID-19 Pandemic 1 Introduction 2 Health Resilience Score 3 Connection Between Mental and Physical Health 3.1 Effects of Stress 3.2 Causes of Stress 4 Mental Health Resilience 5 Lifeline of Education System During COVID-19 Pandemic 6 Proper Actions and Strategies During Pandemic for Developing Resilience 7 Concluding Remarks References Use of Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques for Adaptation and Mitigation of COVID-19 Pandemic 1 Introduction 2 Prime Focus of the Proposed Chapter 3 Applications of GIS for Pandemic Management 3.1 GIS-Based Analysis of COVID-19 for Understanding the Spatio-Temporal Spread of Infections 3.2 GIS-based Voronoi Approach and Bayesian Probabilistic Modeling for Understanding COVID-19 Transmission 3.3 GIS-Based Analysis for Understanding the Statistics of Accessible COVID-19 Testing Centers 4 Applications of Remote Sensing Tools for Adaptation and Mitigation 5 Conclusion 6 Suggestions and Future Perspective References Mapping Blockchain Technology Prospects and Solutions in the Healthcare Industry for Pandemic Crises 1 Blockchain Technology and Healthcare Industry 2 Benefits of Blockchain Technology in Healthcare Sector 3 Challenges of Blockchain Technology in Healthcare Sector 3.1 Governance Issues 3.2 Scalability and Storage Capacity Concerns 3.3 Lack of Technical Competencies Among Healthcare Personnel 3.4 Universal Interoperability and Standardization Issues 3.5 High Installation Costs, Slow Processing Speed and High Energy Consumption 4 Mapping Blockchain Technology Prospects and Solutions in the Healthcare Industry 4.1 Improve Scalability 4.2 Track and Trace Medication and Medical Equipment 4.3 Transform, Simplify and Streamline Partnerships 4.4 Transform Electronic Health Records (EHR) Management 4.5 Transform Medical Supply Logistics 4.6 Fix Healthcare Supply Chain Vulnerabilities 4.7 Real-Time Update Through Intelligent Monitoring Systems 5 Summary and Conclusion References Future Directions and Roadmaps The Role of Healthcare in Post Pandemic Era—“COVID Normal” 1 Introduction 2 Problem Statement 3 Post Pandemic Era: The “COVID Normal” 4 Pandemic Management Plan—Need of the Hour 4.1 Proposed Pandemic Management Plan 4.2 Pandemic Management Cycle—Four Phases 5 Conclusion References Scenario Assessment for COVID-19 Outbreak in Iran: A Hybrid Simulation–Optimization Model for Healthcare Capacity Allocation 1 Introduction 2 Literature Review 3 Methodology 3.1 System Dynamics (SD) Model 3.2 Optimization Model 4 Experimental Validation 4.1 The Experimental Protocol 4.2 Results 5 Conclusion Appendix 1 Appendix 2: Differential Equations References Ensuring a Superior Level of Prepareness and Readiness by Adopting a Knowledge-Based Network-Centric Approach Leveraging Information Systems for Emergency and Disaster Management 1 Introduction 2 Description of Model 2.1 Technical Aspects 2.2 People Aspects 2.3 Boyd’s OODA Loop 2.4 The Intelligence Continuum 3 A Possible Network Solution for Better Pandemic Preparedness and Readiness 4 Discussion 5 Conclusion References mHealth Systems and Applications in Post-pandemic Healthcare 1 Introduction 2 Contact Tracing Apps 3 Pandemic Driven Health Apps 4 Technology Acceptance 5 Opportunities of mHealth 6 Challenges of mHealth 7 Conclusion References Synergistic Effects of Environmental Factors on the Spread of Corona Virus 1 Introduction 2 Environmental Factors and COVID-19 2.1 Weather Effects on COVID-19 2.2 Synergies Between Weather Factors and COVID-19 Cases in Pakistan 2.3 Effect of Pollution on COVID-19 3 Conclusion References CFD Analysis of COVID-19 Dispersion via Speaking, Breathing, Coughing, and (or) Sneezing 1 Introduction 2 Respiratory Droplets 2.1 Size 2.2 Formation 3 Aerodynamics of Droplets Induced by Respiratory Events 3.1 Relative Humidity 3.2 Weather Condition 3.3 Ventilation 3.4 Ambient Temperature/Initial Speed of Exhalation Jet Effects 4 Mathematical and Numerical Modeling 4.1 Coupling 4.2 Droplet Distribution 4.3 Modeling 5 Summary 6 Future Outlook References COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Roadmap for the Future References