With the spurt of COVID-19 cases, the healthcare systems have not been able to keep up to the demand for hospital beds. It is quite illogical to blame them when we see cases rise by 1000 every day. While several governments have leapt into action and repurposed educational institutions and now-empty hotels into isolation facilities, the demand is still rising.
The plausible solution is to keep the patients at home, where they already have room to stay alone. However, as days go on, people become restless and they would want to go out – for a smoke, for a coffee or to have a morning stroll at the park. Giving in to these natural tendencies could mean infecting more people and rising the number of cases again. A country that is already strapped for facilities cannot afford such a situation.
Hence, technological solutions have to be adopted to ensure the patient stays home throughout their quarantine days – be it 14 or 28.
Geo Tracking & Fencing
A government can launch a healthcare app for all citizens to install in their phones. The app shall periodically track the user location. If GPS is not available, the app will use cell tower triangulation method to calculate approximate location. The user location thus tracked will be stored in the app’s local memory and will not be shared with a third party.
If the user is identified to have contracted the Corona Virus, then the app’s data can be checked to create a route-map for the user. The route map will help the government and concerned healthcare authorities to identify the possible persons to whom the virus may have been transmitted.
As an additional step, for a user who is in isolation can have a geo-fence marked in their app. If the user travels outside the marked fence (with their phone, of course), the app shall alert the authorities of the same.
Face Recognition
On top of the geo-fencing, a face recognition system can be employed to make sure the user stays within the allowed perimeter. There can be chances where the user has left the phone at home and wandered outside. The app may send notifications to the user to send a selfie of them. The sent image will have location coordinates tagged along with it. The system will cross-check this selfie with the image that they have in their database. This will ensure the user is home and have not gone out leaving their phone at home.
SectorQube wants to help out the people fighting in the frontlines of this war against the invisible enemy. We can help healthcare organizations and governments implement these features in their mobile apps to ease their jobs and make the world a safer place.
