COVID-TECH AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN FOREIGN AND RUSSIAN HEALTH CARE DURING THE NEW CORONAVIRUS INFECTION PANDEMIC

Abstract

The novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) pandemic has become the biggest challenge to global and national health systems in the last 100 years. At the same time, the rapid spread of COVID-19, which required the introduction of quarantine measures, the need to maintain social distance and isolate the infected, spurred the development of information technology (IT). In healthcare, information technology has begun to play the role of support systems for various types of medical activities that have experienced a tremendous increase in workload. The use of modern information technologies in the fight against the consequences and spread of the pandemic has even acquired its own term - COVID-Tech. The article provides an overview of the achievements of COVID-Tech made in the world and in Russia since the beginning of the pandemic. Experts identify 6 main areas of application of information technologies in medicine during a pandemic: diagnostics and screening of COVID-19, search for treatment regimens for the disease and new drugs based on big data analysis, work with databases, their analysis and analytics (for example, creating maps of the spread of a pandemic virus SARS-CoV-2), monitoring social distancing, the spread of the disease, information support for the population during a global emergency, the use of telemedicine technologies in medical education and the use of robotic assistants. For each of the 6 areas, an overview of the developed technologies is presented. An assessment was made of the contribution of information technology to addressing urgent health issues during a period of increased workload.