Cloud computing has emerged as one of the smartest instruments in navigating the Covid-19 crisis. Cloud rapidly enabled us to work, learn, shop and play remotely, sitting in the safe confines of our homes. Since the global outbreak of the pandemic, cloud technologies have become the very foundation of some of the key transitions and innovations in the healthcare sector.
Here’s a look at how Cloud, in combination with analytics, AI and digital technologies, have become the catalyst for change in the healthcare industry.
Three ways how Cloud is fast-tracking the healthcare response to Covid-19
1.Data Analytics And Predictive Models:
Data has emerged as a powerful weapon in the fight against the pandemic. Robust insights driven from massive volumes of data are used across the lifecycle of pandemic management—from diagnose to treat to cure and most importantly, for research and drug discovery. Statistics reveal that 2300 exabytes of healthcare data will be produced in 2020 (according to pre-Covid estimates). The current challenge is the disconnected, siloed nature of these data sets. Cloud-based data lakes are helping to centralize and provide easy access to data for analytics.
Recently, AWS made its COVID-19 data lake—a centralized repository of up-to-date and curated datasets on the pandemic—publicly available for researchers and healthcare providers. The cloud firm has also worked closely with WHO to jointly leverage the power of cloud technologies to come up a number of services. WHO’s Academy app, its ‘situation dashboard’, OpenWHO knowledge transfer platform, its early warning system—all of these are built with help of AWS cloud technologies and other tools.
2.Telehealth Through Cloud:
Remote healthcare or virtual healthcare is by far the biggest change that the healthcare sector has embraced. Increasingly, providers are looking at new models of healthcare delivery and healthcare management—including telemedicine and telehealth services. Telehealth services market is growing at a staggering 65 percent in 2020.
AI-powered, cloud-based teleconsulting systems can take the load off the doctors and hospitals by providing medical information to patients, by assessing symptoms and risk factors. Cloud-hosted telemedicine and telemonitoring are increasingly becoming common to treat home-isolated Covid-19 positive patients. Tele-counselling is helping in reducing the risk of infectious exposure, workload on clinicians and provide better patient care.
3. Cloud-powered bots:
Hospitals and contact centers across the world have been swamped by enquiries and requests since the outbreak. Public health organizations and healthcare professionals need to respond fast, provide accurate information, triage new patients and advise further action. Many healthcare organizations are looking at healthcare bots and triage bots to scale these efforts and engagement with citizens.
Most of these tools can be quickly deployed for websites or applications and deliver a self-service and natural conversation experience to people. It does more than just providing the right information. Bots can triage patient needs, check symptoms, book appointments and comes integrated with medical databases and protocols. Some hospitals are using chatbots to address mental health issues due to Covid-19.
Further Reading : The Telemedicine Era Is Upon Us And Cloud Is Powering It
About the Author:
Amit Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO . Amit Gupta has over 20 years of experience in delivering strategic projects in big data and highly responsive systems. He has headed a business unit of hospitality automation tool and touched 4000+ customers, successfully selling it before founding Intelligentia.
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