Healthcare information technology convergence to effectively cope with the COVID-19 crisis

To the editor:

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis has been creating not only serious health problems but also crucial social issues worldwide. The exceptionally rapid spread of COVID-19 is substantially threatening human beings’ physical and psychological health, resulting in not only the degradation in the quality of human being's individual and social life but also the global economic downturn. As a result, a lot of healthcare organizations struggle to come up with various effective approaches to stop the COVID-19 crisis. The situation is unprecedented in modern times, making it difficult to find an effective solution. To help solve this big difficulty, we introduce how healthcare information technology (IT) convergence can be applied to effectively cope with the COVID-19 crisis.

There are two essential solutions to effectively cope with the COVID-19 crisis: preventing the rapid spread of the disease (① in Fig. 1 ) and developing an effective medicine for it (② in Fig. 1). These two solutions can be effectively implemented through healthcare IT convergence based on the integration and complementation of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain technology, cloud technology, internet of things (IoT), and smart wearable devices (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Healthcare IT convergence to effectively cope with the COVID-19 crisis.

The healthcare IT convergence can effectively help prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19. Physical contact facilitates its proliferation, and to make matters worse, it can also increase the possibility of medical staff infection, which is very detrimental to the prevention of the disease. Therefore, minimizing physical contact is essential to prevent the rapid spread of COVID-19. Regularly checking one's body temperature and health condition is also essential. Smart wearable devices converged with IoT make it possible to check individuals’ health conditions in real time without physical contact with medical staff [1,2]. They enable people to gain access to online networks whenever and wherever they go [1,2], effectively sharing people's healthcare information with their medical experts regardless of time and region with no physical contact [1,2]. This will require massive medical data repositories and healthcare information security to constantly collect and share healthcare information in real-time about COVID-19 patients or people suspected of being infected via data coming through the smart wearable devices. The integration of cloud technology and blockchain technology can provide scalable medical big data repositories with solid information protection [2,3]. AI, integrated with medical big data repositories reinforced with smart wearable devices constantly collecting healthcare data about COVID-19 patients or people suspected of being infected, can provide more advanced functions useful for more effectively and accurately monitoring COVID-19 [1], [2], [3].

The healthcare IT convergence can effectively facilitate the development of a medicine for COVID-19. The transformations of the disease can make it more difficult to develop a cure, increasing the need for various medical information about the transformations of the virus, advanced biomedical analysis for research, and global R&D collaboration between various healthcare organizations to develop the medicine. Smart wearable devices, integrated with cloud technology and IoT, can constantly nourish the medical big data necessary for analyzing the transformations of COVID-19 [1], [2], [3]. AI, such as machine learning analysis converged with cloud technology and IoT, can effectively analyze the biomedical big data collected from the smart wearable devices to research on the transformations of the virus [1], [2], [3]. Blockchain technology, IoT and cloud technology can effectively support global R&D collaborations between various healthcare organizations to develop the medicine for COVID-19 by making their medical information collection and sharing more secure and fast [1], [2], [3].

Put together, the healthcare IT ― big data, AI, blockchain technology, cloud technology, IoT, and smart wearable devices ― can make a substantial and positive synergic effect on effectively counterattacking the COVID-19. Therefore, we hope that the healthcare IT convergence will be deployed to facilitate the prevention of the rapid spread of the COVID-19 and the development of an effective medicine as soon as possible.

Ethics statement

Not Applicable.

Disclosure statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Funding information

This work was supported by the 2018 Yeungnam University Research Grant. The present study was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean government (grant no. NRF-2019M3E5D1A02069399).