The Role Of Big Tech in Coronavirus
By Abbas Mooraj, Managing Director, Health and Life Sciences, Cloudera
This article is part of a continuing series around how a variety of organizations are innovating and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have written about how healthcare organizations are responding, resources for the healthcare supply chain, and what’s happening within telemedicine, behavioral health, remote monitoring, home health and other players.
In this article, I’m going to explore how various technology players are weighing in on the discussion to potentially help with contact tracing, immunity passports, locating testing facilities and using online tools to help people self-diagnose for COVID-19, prep healthcare organizations so they can prepare and respond, test workers for COVID-19, contribute resources to develop medications and vaccines, and offer rides to caregivers and patients in need. Technology can play a huge role in helping slow the spread of the virus, and make predictions to help control and ultimately combat it in the future.
Apps and APIs for contact tracing and immunity passports
Contact tracing has received a lot of press about being one of the cornerstones to reopening the economy because if individuals are notified about others they have come in contact with who test positive for COVID-19, then they can get tested themselves. This would mean only those who test positive will require quarantining vs. the many shelter-in-place guidelines that ask people to only leave their homes for essential items and services.
Apple and Google, which between them have nearly 100% of the global mobile phone market, have teamed to offer API collection tools so states, public health agencies, and governments can build their own tracing apps. Individuals would need to opt into the app before their whereabouts could be tracked if this type of technology becomes available in their area. If they choose to opt-in, alerts are sent to individuals who have come in close proximity to others who have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past week or two, along with advice regarding what to do next.
The ensuing discussion about this form of contact tracing revolves around the fine line between ensuring privacy and creating an effective way to conduct contact tracing. In reality, the more that systems protect individual data, the less chance of driving effective outcomes. While no one will be forced to opt into apps like this, the choice is to stem infection rates or safeguard data.
This technology has met a variety of obstacles, including:
- Lack of a centralized database
- Limited opt-ins from people where the app is available
- No opt-ins in where the app isn’t available
- Delays caused by the need to develop apps by governments and other entities
In another focus on reopening the economy, Epic started working on an immunity passport phone app that would identify that you’ve been tested and are clear, or have had COVID-19 and now have immunity, or whether your status is unknown. This information would also be included on patients’ healthcare records.
While there is a huge opportunity to integrate immunity passports not only into patient records, but also within airlines, retail businesses, and restaurants that have either shut down completely or are offering limited service, many believe that this is not a good idea for a variety of reasons:
- No one knows with 100% certainty how long COVID-19 immunity lasts post-infection
- Unreliability of serological tests
- Testing volumes required for immunity passport viability is unrealistic
Even as immunity passports hold potential for reopening the economy, the number of obstacles may be insurmountable to effective implementation.
The chatbot will see you now
Hospitals have the opportunity to include COVID-19 screening chatbots on their websites, which is part of the work being done by Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences research department, and sister company to Google.
With the aid of chatbots, patients are guided to relevant information and local resources. This tool is being used by San Joaquin General Hospital, Western Wisconsin Health, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Morehouse Healthcare.
Some state governments have asked voice app developers like Voicify to help them communicate with their citizens about COVID-19 through Alexa and Google Assistant. Interactive voice and text chatbots are also being built, and medical professionals and policymakers want to slow calls to hospitals and doctors, either by using a virtual assistant or adapting Microsoft’s template. Google Assistant already offers pandemic tips, Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa voice assistants also provide COVID-19 questionnaires to assess infection potential.
Chatbots are used most frequently in real estate and for customer service — with banking not far behind. Currently, 1.4 billion people use chatbots, and the numbers are likely to grow, with more than half of all internet users happy with them and 60% of Millennials using them on a regular basis. Here are a couple of stats that reflect the use and adoption of chatbots:
- 64% of internet users say 24-hour service is the best feature
- 37% of people use them to get quick answers in an emergency
Babylon Health also offers the COVID-19 Care Assistant free to its members to allow them to check symptoms, monitor their illness, and attend a virtual doctor consultation if needed.
Test site finder tool, self-screening, and more resources
Health navigation company Castlight Health offers a tool for individuals to find COVID-19 testing locations near them. This technology has also been embedded into resources offered by Google, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Ford Motor Company, and others. Individuals enter their address on the site and locations are displayed for receiving testing, along with the testing criteria for each location.
Apple released an information resource to direct individuals to self-screen for the virus, take the proper steps to protect their health during the rapid spread of COVID-19, and direct them to local resources. The new COVID-19 website and app were created with the CDC, the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in an effort to curb the coronavirus spread, and combat misinformation and fake cures that range from homemade recipes to vaccines.
Your plasma, please …
A coalition of organizations including Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins University, Anthem, LabCorp, plasma companies, blood centers, and Microsoft are working to encourage people who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate their blood plasma. Ongoing research into this convalescent plasma indicates potential use for treating severely ill COVID-19 patients until a vaccine is developed.
To get more convalescent plasma donors to step forward, Microsoft is working with Mitre Corporation to develop a recruitment website, thefightisinus.org, and is launching a plasma bot, a digital self-qualification tool, to direct donors to plasma centers. To further coordinate efforts, Uber offers free rides to anyone who needs to travel a long distance to make a donation.
Another rideshare leader, Lyft, has teamed with Medicaid agencies and partners in Florida, Michigan, and South Carolina to patients seeking testing and treatment for COVID-19. In addition, it is offering rides to caregivers for more than a dozen healthcare systems.
Speeding research, helping hospitals prepare and respond, testing workers
Google Cloud has offered researchers free access to its COVID-19 Public Dataset Program to help speed analytics during the pandemic. This program makes available a hosted repository of public datasets from the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE) dashboard, Global Health Data from the World Bank, and OpenStreetMap data. Removing barriers to research and providing access to crucial information removes the need for researchers to onboard large data files and allows them to perform queries to further advance COVID-19 research.
Amazon Web Services has launched the $20 million AWS Diagnostic Initiative to accelerate COVID-19 research. In addition, Amazon started setting up a testing lab for its own frontline warehouse and delivery workers to screen for COVID-19.
On the hospital supply chain front, IBM has rolled out a Blockchain network called Rapid Supplier Connect to help government and healthcare organizations identify and onboard alternative supply and equipment vendors.
Cloudera, too, is proud to work with more than 50 health systems, including Yale School of Medicine, which is using a data science platform to support real-time data acquisition and agile analytics that are helping determine how many people have been infected, how many beds are available to handle inpatient and ICU care, ventilator capacity, number of healthcare providers exposed to COVID-19, and how it affects the organization’s ability to respond to increasing numbers of coronavirus patients.
Conclusion
Technology organizations have slowly been expanding their healthcare presence, and now are making efforts to help during the COVID-19 pandemic. I truly believe every healthcare organization needs to use every tool at its disposal in the battle against this unseen enemy. Data, and the insights derived from that data, makes us better prepared to fight the next battle, and accurate data modeling and predictions will help drive healthcare policy and delivery. Data sharing practices that are emerging today will help mitigate a resurgence of the coronavirus and will serve to prepare the world for the first modern pandemic and others to come.
Stay safe and well.
