The atmospheric buoyancy and intangible nature of fatal communicable viruses lead to rapid transmissions among individuals, resulting in global pandemics. Strategic lockdowns and mandatory social distancing are immediate solutions in such scenarios. However, this leads to operational disruptions in education, manufacturing, economy, transportation, governance, and community. Although technological assistance is beneficial in overcoming such issues, the current Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure has limitations. In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of the possible IoT-based solutions that have the capacity of combating the COVID-19-like viruses. We highlight the societal impacts due to pandemics and identify the specific lacunae in current IoT solutions. We also provide comprehensive detail on how to overcome the challenges along with directions toward the possible technological trends for future research. Compared to existing reviews, our work offers a holistic view of the cause, effects, and the possible solutions that are existing, along with already existing solutions that can be customized to serve the special needs during the pandemic.

IoT-to-the-Rescue: A Survey of IoT Solutions for COVID-19-Like Pandemics

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the promise of supporting nurses’ clinical decision-making in complex care situations or conducting tasks that are remote from direct patient interaction, such as documentation processes. There has been an increase in the research and development of AI applications for nursing care, but there is a persistent lack of an extensive overview covering the evidence base for promising application scenarios.
Objective: This study synthesizes literature on application scenarios for AI in nursing care settings as well as highlights adjacent aspects in the ethical, legal, and social discourse surrounding the application of AI in nursing care.
Methods: Following a rapid review design, PubMed, CINAHL, Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore, Digital Bibliography & Library Project, and Association for Information Systems Library, as well as the libraries of leading AI conferences, were searched in June 2020. Publications of original quantitative and qualitative research, systematic reviews, discussion papers, and essays on the ethical, legal, and social implications published in English were included. Eligible studies were analyzed on the basis of predetermined selection criteria.
Results: The titles and abstracts of 7016 publications and 704 full texts were screened, and 292 publications were included. Hospitals were the most prominent study setting, followed by independent living at home; fewer application scenarios were identified for nursing homes or home care. Most studies used machine learning algorithms, whereas expert or hybrid systems were entailed in less than every 10th publication. The application context of focusing on image and signal processing with tracking, monitoring, or the classification of activity and health followed by care coordination and communication, as well as fall detection, was the main purpose of AI applications. Few studies have reported the effects of AI applications on clinical or organizational outcomes, lacking particularly in data gathered outside laboratory conditions. In addition to technological requirements, the reporting and inclusion of certain requirements capture more overarching topics, such as data privacy, safety, and technology acceptance. Ethical, legal, and social implications reflect the discourse on technology use in health care but have mostly not been discussed in meaningful and potentially encompassing detail.
Conclusions: The results highlight the potential for the application of AI systems in different nursing care settings. Considering the lack of findings on the effectiveness and application of AI systems in real-world scenarios, future research should reflect on a more nursing care–specific perspective toward objectives, outcomes, and benefits. We identify that, crucially, an advancement in technological-societal discourse that surrounds the ethical and legal implications of AI applications in nursing care is a necessary next step. Further, we outline the need for greater participation among all of the stakeholders involved.

Application Scenarios for Artificial Intelligence in Nursing Care: Rapid Review.

The pandemic of COVID-19 is continuing to wreak havoc in 2021, with at least 170 million victims around the world. Healthcare systems are overwhelmed by the large-scale virus infection. Luckily, Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most effective paradigms in the intelligent world, in which the technology of artificial intelligence (AI), like cloud computing and big data analysis, is playing a vital role in preventing the spread of the pandemic of COVID-19. AI and 5G technologies are advancing by leaps and bounds, further strengthening the intelligence and connectivity of IoT applications, and conventional IoT has been gradually upgraded to be more powerful AI + IoT (AIoT). For example, in terms of remote screening and diagnosis of COVID-19 patients, AI technology based on machine learning and deep learning has recently upgraded medical equipment significantly and has reshaped the workflow with minimal contact with patients, so medical specialists can make clinical decisions more efficiently, providing the best protection not only to patients but also to specialists themselves. This paper reviews the latest progress made in combating COVID-19 with both IoT and AI and also provides comprehensive details on how to combat the pandemic of COVID-19 as well as the technologies that may be applied in the future.

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AIoT Used for COVID-19 Pandemic Prevention and Control.

With the advancement and widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) in a variety of fields, experts in the field of medicine have begun to actualize their powers in handling and analyzing data for telemedicine. Outpatients who require medical treatment but are unable to obtain it due to a lack of finances or limited access might benefit from telemedicine platforms, which provide unique and creative alternatives. Due to the difficulties in using telemedicine, it is necessary to develop its capacities and adaptability in order to overcome telemedicine problems. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a steady progress in technology that allows for the extension of relationships across the internet (IoT), and the development of the capacity to manage information has created more significant chances for the global health sector, notably telemedicine. The advantages of combining telemedicine and AI provided limitless chances for advancement, and this article surveyed the literature on existing work. Information analysis cooperation, intelligent aid diagnosis, healthcare information technology, and patient monitoring are the four most recent developments in this field. This paper also discusses how AI and telemedicine have been used to improve continuous monitoring, as well as the difficulties they are meant to address.

Comparative Analysis of e-Health Care Telemedicine System Based on Internet of Medical Things and Artificial Intelligence

Nowadays, the Internet has spread to practically every country around the world and is having unprecedented effects on people’s lives. The Internet of Things (IoT) is getting more popular and has a high level of interest in both practitioners and academicians in the age of wireless communication due to its diverse applications. The IoT is a technology that enables everyday things to become savvier, everyday computation toward becoming intellectual, and everyday communication to become a little more insightful. In this article, the most common and popular IoT device capabilities, architectures, and protocols are demonstrated in brief to provide a clear overview of the IoT technology to the researchers in this area. The common IoT device capabilities, including hardware (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and ESP8266) and software (operating systems (OSs), and built-in tools) platforms are described in detail. The widely used architectures that have recently evolved and used are the three-layer architecture, service-oriented architecture, and middleware-based architecture. The popular protocols for IoT are demonstrated which include constrained application protocol, message queue telemetry transport, extensible messaging and presence protocol, advanced message queuing protocol, data distribution service, low power wireless personal area network, Bluetooth low energy, and ZigBee that are frequently utilized to develop smart IoT applications. Additionally, this research provides an in-depth overview of the potential healthcare applications based on IoT technologies in the context of addressing various healthcare concerns. Finally, this article summarizes state-of-the-art knowledge, highlights open issues and shortcomings, and provides recommendations for further studies which would be quite beneficial to anyone with a desire to work in this field and make breakthroughs to get expertise in this area.

Internet of Things: Device Capabilities, Architectures, Protocols, and Smart Applications in Healthcare Domain

This paper deals with the modalities of the Smart Automated Health Machine (AHM) using Internet of Things (IoT), a user-friendly health machine with an interactive graphical user interface for medical necessities. It is a virtual health check-up/self-screening/test system, aimed at being the first point of contact for patient screening, to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, ECG, oxygen saturation, and visual acuity of patients. In case of emergency, a doctor will be available online through a video call, based on the severity of patients’ conditions, a call can be placed by a doctor to book an ambulance van or ambulance bike (based on the conditions). If a patient is unconscious, a direct call can be placed by any bystander or patient’s carer to book an ambulance. In non-emergency cases, medical appointments can be booked - the system will also dispense medicines based on the health conditions and/or doctor’s electronic prescription which can be selected among the list of available medicines. Each individual will be provided with a "smart health card", which will keep a record of patients’ personal details, health conditions, prescriptions, and amount of tablets consumed. The AHM will provide all the necessary information, keep a record of different medical problems in different regions and different necessities required to be adopted. The system can also be called as "Self Healthcare Service (SHS)" or "Self Healthcare Units (SHU)" -the initiatives are part of sustainable development goals (SDG-3) proposed by United Nations.We conducted a pilot evaluation with the patients, nurses and doctors. As an overall outcome, the practitioners feel the system can be adopted in an area where medical facility is not available immediately. Adopting this system in such regions not only help in medical emergencies/epidemic/pandemic such as COVID, it also increases the percentage of survival. The system can also be adopted in hospitals, pharmacies, schools, public places like bus/train stations, airports, markets or any commercial areas, zones prone to accidents in rural and urban areas and other places that can be quite useful and helpful to the public.

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AutoImpilo: Smart Automated Health Machine using IoT to Improve Telemedicine and Telehealth

India’s diverse climate ensures availability of all varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables. It ranks second in fruit production in the world, after China. As per National Horticulture Database published by National Horticulture Board, during 2018-19, India produced 90.2 million metric tons of fruits. Amongst fruits, India ranks first in production of Bananas (25.7%), Papayas (43.6%) and Mangoes (40.4%). Quality of fruits determines the shelf life as fresh commodities have a very high importance in their post-harvest handling and supply chain management. Grievously, bananas and mangoes are artificially ripened as they are consumed in large quantities. These produced fruits contain pesticides that may harm human beings to a greater extent. There are 234 pesticides registered in India, which has prescribed permissible level for human consumption and exceeding this level will cause carcinogenic effects in human beings. This can be overcome only by the selection of the quality of fruit and the only way to do it is Quality Detection using the latest technologies, which involves finding of artificially ripened fruits and pesticide residue levels in fruit. We integrate three existing methods to provide better efficiency which is discussed in the paper. This can probably ensure organic consumption of fruits and vegetables, and greatly helps horticulture and agro-industries to enhance trading of fruits with good quality. The product can play a significant role in terms of Make in India Scheme, where the model is designed to classify the fruits effectively.

Quality Detection of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables to Improve Horticulture and Agro-industries

The advancements in medical science and technology has resulted in an increased life span thus the mortality rate of the elderly has greatly decreased. The elderly often gets cognitively impaired and require urgent medical services which when left unnoticed may lead to fatal consequences. Due to lack of social care support for these adults, there arises the need to develop cost-effective assistive healthcare technological solutions for taking care of the elders and giving them the best tech-friendly experience. Intelligent homes, an environment of sensors with artificial intelligence integrated with home appliances, can provide the best solution for continuous and remote monitoring of the health of the persons. This helps elders to control various devices, also get immediate attention from the family members, healthcare assistants and/or have frequent visit to hospitals. Basically, an intelligent bed can help elders to prevent the occurrence of bedsores and falling off from bed by monitoring the position of the person while they are in bed. The latest Google Duplex Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be used as a voice-controlled speech recognition system, a personal assistant, to respond to the commands given by the person. We use Internet of Things (IoT) to establish the connectivity between the appliances, the user and his/her network. The major element of this system is a Raspberry Pi which will collect the data from the sensors and interprets them to manage the home appliances like light, fan, door, alarm (in case of emergency), manage phone calls, television, and other home appliances. There is also an emergency module which has sensors attached to the body of the person which helps the caretakers, relatives or friends to know about the health of the person. It continuously monitors the body conditions of the person and alerts his/her network in case of emergency.

IoT-based Google Duplex Artificial Intelligence Solution for Elderly Care

The novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) is a pandemic of unimaginable proportion and magnitude that is posing a great challenge worldwide to the medical industry in the 21st century. It has completely changed the texture of life to a greater extent. The increasing number of victims succumbing to the disease has created an indelible fear in the minds of the people who are afraid to access even the basic healthcare facilities. This paper deals with the Automatic Health Machine (AHM) which uses IoT and Artificial Intelligence technologies to help users access medical facilities during a pandemic and medical emergency mostly in rural and urban areas. The AHM provides complete virtual health checkup, connects with the doctor or specialist online and books appointments for the swab test or ambulance in case of emergency based on the patient’s condition, dispenses the swab test or emergency medicines and electronic prescription to patients for later reference. The services of the AHM are accessible to all individuals using “Smart Health Card”. According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG3) proposed by the United Nations, the AHM ensures the wellbeing of all ages in society and increases the survival rate during unprecedented times like a pandemic/epidemic. We collaborated with industries and hospitals to understand healthcare/patients’ requirements considering pandemic and post-pandemic. We conducted virtual workshops with the COVID-recovered patients and frontline nurses and doctors. As an overall outcome, the healthcare professionals feel the system can be adopted in an area where medical facility is not available immediately. Thus, our work has led to a patent being published in India and USA.

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Automatic Health Machine for COVID-19 and Other Emergencies

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has made a dire requirement for traditional and disruptive technologies to react to the flare-up across health and wellbeing areas, and technologies such as AI and robotics have been recognized as promising ways to tackle the current challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has exhibited the solid capability of different advanced technologies that have been tried during the emergency. However, acceptability and adoptability of the latest technologies may face serious challenges due to potential conflicts with users’ cultural, moral, and religious backgrounds. This paper discusses the current opportunities and challenges with respect to artificial intelligence (AI) powered robots to battle COVID-19. To diminish the danger of contamination and infection, the opportunities must be utilized during this pandemic for a better future. More deliberate measures ought to be executed to guarantee that future robotic health initiatives will have a greater impact on the pandemic and meet the most key needs to facilitate the life of individuals who are at the forefront of the crisis.

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Sumathi Sokkanarayanan

Papers

AutoImpilo: Smart Automated Health Machine using IoT to Improve Telemedicine and Telehealth

Quality Detection of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables to Improve Horticulture and Agro-industries

IoT-based Google Duplex Artificial Intelligence Solution for Elderly Care

Automatic Health Machine for COVID-19 and Other Emergencies

Opportunities of Adopting AI-Powered Robotics to Tackle COVID-19