COVID-19 To Spread Digital Healthcare Revolution?
The panic around the world and the ongoing lockdown see widespread adoption of digital healthcare methods
Seven weeks ago, South Korea and the US had the same number of COVID-19 deaths. Today, South Korea has around 250 while the US has almost 80,000. What’s behind South Korea’s COVID-19 exceptionalism?
By the end of February 2020, South Korea was the 2nd-hardest hit with the most COVID-19 patients of any country outside China. New confirmed cases were added in their triple digits every day and pharmacies were running out of face masks. Nearly 90 countries imposed travel restrictions on South Korea, including the US, which had, at the time, less than 10 deaths.
Today, the US, as of writing, has over 1.3 million cases, followed by Europe with nearly 1.4 million cases. South Korea now ranks 38th with 10,822 cases. Starting next week, schools will slowly reopen and social distancing policies to be relaxed. So what happened?
Three things: Fast and free testing, expansive digital technology, and mandatory isolation of anyone potentially exposed. For this article, we’ll focus on digital technology.
Just as South Korea appeared to descend into another healthcare catastrophe after MERS in 2015, the country stopped the virus in its track. Within days, central and local governments are sending real-time alerts via text message, apps, and online on the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus as well as the travel histories of those infected.
Launched in February, the “self-quarantine safety protection” app, developed by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, allows those who have been quarantined to stay in touch with caseworkers, using GPS to keep track of their location, as well as real-time reporting of wellbeing and flu-related symptoms, if any, before they appear. Should any symptoms or a trigger appear (e.g. headaches, etc…), a caseworker will advise on the necessary steps. It had a million downloads on its first 10 days and alerts users when they come within 100 meters of a location visited by an infected person, conveniently acting as an intervention and continuous monitoring to stay informed and healthy.
This app is the same way digital therapeutics work — pooling data together using technology, the Internet, AI, and analytics using a series of intervention to manage and monitor symptoms by bridging the caseworker and those in quarantine with a smart mobile app.
The openness and transparency in keeping the public informed with intervention-based software have inspired many nations to adopt a similar strategy. We saw this in Taiwan, Germany, Singapore, and Australia, all of which have developed their app to take advantage of technology, the Internet, AI, and data analytics to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, the app in South Korea is live in conjunction with the Coronamap website, giving individuals live information of COVID-19-hit areas. The country additionally created a “smart city technology system” aimed to help health investigators to trace and track COVID-19 patients whereabouts and routes.
COVID-19 will no doubt hasten the digital transformation of healthcare and digital therapies. With the whole world in lockdown, public and health professionals are starting to make digital healthcare a priority, using the model in South Korea. Additionally, excluding those in quarantined, it is widely expected that patient demand for remote consultations and online health services will increase, making the case for digitizing and automating health stronger than ever.
What does this mean for PiCO GO?
As we wrote past articles, digital health, in particular, digital therapeutics, is the future of healthcare. With PiCO GO, we integrate everything we’ve learned from PiCO Home (environmental sensors such as PM 2.5, VOCs, etc…) and add biometric sensors (e.g. heart rate) to make this a revolutionary DTx.
PiCO Home is available now on Amazon.
To inquire more about Brilliant & Company, please do not hesitate to drop us a line:
- CEO / Ryan Yun / ryan.yun@brilcom.com
- Global Marketing Manager / Steve Tan / steve.tan@brilcom.com
