COVID-19 Deaths 9, Increase in 'Non-face-to-face Mobility Services'
Virus first prediction is algorithm-based medical AI platform
IoT, big data, autonomous driving, etc. will grow rapidly after COVID-19

On the 19th, a patient in his 60s who had been hospitalized for schizophrenia and receiving treatment without a family history died at Cheongdo Daenam Hospital. The postmortem test results showed that he tested positive for a new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) that first emerged in Wuhan, China in December of last year.

On the morning of the 25th, a 60-year-old woman hospitalized at Daegu Chilgok Hospital died, and in the afternoon, a man in his 50s related to Cheongdo Daenam Hospital died, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 infections to 977 (10 deaths). COVID-19 is transmitted when an infected person’s droplets penetrate the respiratory tract, eyes, nose, and mouth mucous membranes, and the atmosphere of refraining from person-to-person contact has been increasing recently.

In the wake of the spread of COVID-19, services utilizing cutting-edge ICT technologies such as 5G, AI, IoT, big data, and autonomous driving are also increasing. Its importance in the medical field is increasing, including in healthcare, delivery, monitoring, temperature measurement, patient management, and disinfection.
The first prediction of COVID-19 was 'Medical AI Platform'
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the first to warn of the dangers of COVID-19 was the Canadian company BlueDot, a medical AI platform.

Based on artificial intelligence algorithms, we analyzed various sources to identify disease outbreaks and predict how they spread. On December 31, 2019, it sent a message to its customers advising them to avoid traveling to Wuhan, as the virus originated there.

'Nano-biosensor' that detects patients in the latent period
On the 9th, Professor Hwang Kyo-seon's team at Kyung Hee University College of Medicine developed a technology to detect latent COVID-19 virus patients using a biomarker that exists in extremely small amounts in the blood.

Even patients in the incubation period without symptoms such as fever can be diagnosed with infection within an hour by conducting a blood test using a nanobiosensor.

Considering that the current real-time PCR test takes about 6 hours to produce diagnostic results, it can be seen as highly useful for COVID-19 management that addresses timeliness.

'Untact service' instead of visiting the hospital
Non-face-to-face (Untact) service that allows patients to receive treatment without visiting a hospital due to concerns about secondary infection with the COVID-19 virusSuga is getting attention.

Patients can make hospital appointments via mobile devices and then receive treatment from medical staff via a robot with video capabilities.

As COVID-19 spreads rapidly, interest in non-face-to-face services is also increasing due to concerns about secondary infections. In fact, one domestic hospital is conducting non-face-to-face treatment using a robot at a COVID-19 screening clinic. If a doctor’s opinion is needed, the robot and doctor connect via smartphone to provide remote consultation.

According to data compiled by Dokdak, a non-face-to-face service provider, the number of people who used Dokdak services for medical treatment for themselves or their families reached an average of 18,906 per day during the two weeks from January 20 to February 2. This is more than four times (4,521 people) more than the same period last year and a 25% (15,079 people) increase from the previous two weeks.

China's Alibaba is providing free remote medical consultation services in Hubei province through its healthcare platform Alibaba Health. Through Alipay and Taobao apps, patients with mild symptoms are connected to doctors for consultation.

It is an artificial intelligence-based platform that can analyze the call history and content of 500 calls per second.

'AI diagnostic technology' that detects fever
Considering the nature of COVID-19 being transmitted through person-to-person contact, the use of non-face-to-face, non-contact, and mobility-based services is increasing.

A domestic company has introduced a technology that uses a thermal imaging camera to detect fever, one of the symptoms of COVID-19 infection.

The operator can adjust the temperature range to suit the environment, and when a certain temperature is detected, the thermal imaging camera screen is transmitted in real time to the computer screen and monitor, and a voice alarm or text message is sent to the manager to identify the patient.

Existing camcorder-type thermal measurement equipment required operators to be present 24 hours a day, but the newly unveiled thermal detection fusion CCTV technology not only eliminates this inconvenience, but also has the advantage of being harmless to the human body by displaying the detection target only on a far-infrared screen.

Another domestic company unveiled 'Temi', a quarantine care robot used in smart quarantine services. It provides services such as self-fever diagnosis using thermal imaging cameras, automatic spray hand washing, quarantine and control solutions, and transportation and delivery.

This is a one-stop service where people suspected of being infected can make video calls with the staff at the screening clinic through a non-face-to-face service, and information on people suspected of being infected is provided in real time, allowing for control and monitoring.
In China, an AI temperature measurement system is in operation to identify patients with fever symptoms in crowded places. This service, originally used to catch fugitives, uses facial recognition technology to identify coronavirus patients.

Not only can it determine whether there is a fever without contact from a distance of up to 3 meters, but an alarm is immediately activated when a suspected patient with a high fever is recognized, allowing on-site control with just one quarantine officer.

It is an integrated solution for human body, image identification, and infrared sensors that can measure body temperature of up to 15 people per second.

There is also a Chinese company that has introduced technology that goes beyond measuring body temperature to identifying whether or not a mask is being worn. This technology combines thermal imaging, infrared, and visible light to trigger an alarm in real time when a high-risk group with a body temperature of 37℃ or higher or not wearing a mask appears. Afterwards, a dispatch notification is sent to quarantine personnel, and the movements and contact situations of high-risk groups are tracked and preserved in video format.

The accuracy of identifying whether a mask is being worn is 99%, and body temperature can be measured in milliseconds (1/1000 of a second) within a margin of error of ±0.3℃.
Alibaba has introduced an AI diagnostic service jointly developed by its research institute DAMO and Alibaba Cloud. It is a technology that can interpret CT images of suspected COVID-19 patients with 96% accuracy within 20 seconds.

Chest CT scans of patients with COVID-19 show characteristic speckle-like or milky-glass nodular opacity in the lungs, which typically take 5 to 15 minutes to analyze visually.

Alibaba developed an AI algorithm model that learned the shape of data lesions based on more than 5,000 CT image sample data. It is a method of training a CT image identification network using retrospective data from natural language processing (NPL) and a convolutional neural network (CNN).

In addition, a service has been released that allows all of our citizens to receive customized, real-time information they want. WiseNut has been providing a beta version of its COVID-19 chatbot, which combines information provided by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ministry of Health and Welfare with an artificial intelligence chatbot, since the 20th.

You can receive desired information by target, including confirmed cases, people in self-quarantine, the general public, medical personnel, and group facilities.


'Autonomous robots' that replace human labor
Shanghai Jiao Tong University has unveiled an autonomous disinfection robot that has disinfection equipment installed inside the robot to create disinfectant gas. It has a hydrogen peroxide sprayer on top and nine UV lamps in the center.

It can perform 360-degree disinfection without any blind spots indoors, and each robot can carry 1,500 ml of disinfectant, allowing it to work continuously for more than 3 hours at a time.

In Shenyang, Liaoning Province, 21 medical robots are performing tasks such as spraying disinfectants and delivering medicines. They use cutting-edge technologies such as laser position sensors, intelligent navigation, and human-computer interaction.

In New York's Times Square, a Promobot robot has appeared to provide information on infection symptoms to pedestrians. It is a service where the questioner directly checks whether or not he or she is suspected of being infected through a questionnaire or Q&A.

Domestic company Uber has launched a sterilization robot using UV LED technology. It has a built-in UV LED air purification module that sterilizes with light using ultraviolet rays instead of chemicals. It features 8-axis wheels and 360-degree rotation, and provides a sterilization power of 99.999% within 5 minutes.

'Unmanned Aerial Vehicle' that surpasses human limitations
In major cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou in China, about 100 drones have been deployed for patrol and disinfectant spraying purposes. They can patrol 360 degrees with 40x zoom cameras, and when they spot pedestrians without masks, the commander issues a warning through a loudspeaker and continues to follow them.

DJI is deploying its Agras series of agricultural drones to potentially affected areas to spray disinfectant. The spraying speed is 50 times faster than when sprayed directly by humans, making it ideal for responding to the COVID-19 situation.

A police drone equipped with a QR code is floating in the sky on the Huanqiuwang Guiyang Expressway in China. It is a tollgate identity verification system where a paper with a QR code is hung on a drone and identity verification is completed by scanning it with a smartphone.
Experts predict that the medical robot market in China will grow rapidly after the COVID-19 outbreak.

According to data released by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the global service robot market sales in 2018 amounted to $13 billion, of which the Chinese service robot market sales accounted for $2.51 billion. The service robot market in China has been growing rapidly, recording an average annual growth rate of 35% over the past five years.

According to ASKCI, a Chinese market research firm, the market value of China's medical robot industry, which was only about 600 million dollars last year, is expected to exceed 1 billion dollars by 2021.

In particular, China is actively considering automating factory systems to prepare for unexpected risks such as the recent COVID-19 outbreak.

Sim Young-hwa, head of KOTRA’s Dalian Trade Center in China, said, “We need to innovate the manufacturing production structure by utilizing IoT and AI, breaking away from a structure centered on labor resources.” He added, “It is time for Korea to reexamine its strategies for expanding into the medical and healthcare industry, e-commerce, online education, and online platforms. The factory logistics automation system that reduces manufacturing production line risks will accelerate further in the future.”