COVID-19 What Have We Learned? The Rise of Social Machines and Connected Devices in Pandemic Management Following the Concepts of Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine

Abstract

Objectives: Review, compare and critically assess digital technology responses to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. The specific point of interest in this research is on predictive, preventive and personalised interoperable digital healthcare solutions. This point is supported by failures from the past, where the separate design of digital health solutions, has led to lack of interoperability. Hence, this review paper investigates the integration of predictive, preventive and personalised interoperable digital healthcare systems. The second point of interest is the use of new mass surveillance technologies to feed personal data from health professionals to governments, without any comprehensive studies that determine if such new technologies and data policies would address the pandemic crisis.Method: This is a review paper. Two approaches were used: A comprehensive bibliographic review with R statistical methods of the COVID-19 pandemic in PubMed literature and Web of Science Core Collection, supported with Google Scholar search. In addition, a case study review of emerging new approaches in different regions, using medical literature, academic literature, news articles, and other reliable data sources.Results: Most countries’ digital responses involve big data analytics, integration of national health insurance databases, tracing travel history from individual’s location databases, code scanning, and individual’s online reporting. Public responses of mistrust about privacy data misuse differ across countries, depending on the chosen public communication strategy. We propose predictive, preventive and personalised solutions for pandemic management, based on social machines and connected devices.Solutions: The proposed predictive, preventive and personalised solutions are based on the integration of IoT data, wearables devices data, mobile apps data, and individual data inputs from registered users, operating as a social machine with strong security and privacy protocols. We present solutions that would enable much greater speed in future responses. These solutions are enabled by the social aspect of human-computer interactions (social machines) and the increased connectivity of humans and devices (internet of things).Conclusion: Inadequate data for risk assessment on speed and urgency of COVID-19, combined with increased globalisation of human society, led to the rapid spread of COVID-19. Despite an abundance of digital methods that could be used in slowing or stopping COVID-19 and future pandemics, the world remains unprepared and lessons have not been learned from previous cases of pandemics. We present a summary of predictive, preventive and personalised digital methods that could be deployed fast to help with the COVID-19 and future pandemics.