IDTechEx: the role of emerging tech in fighting COVID-19

Details on the roles that emerging technologies have played in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout 2020 have been released by IdTechEx. With results needed at an unprecedented scale in a limited time, diagnostic approaches were explored to quickly diagnose COVID-19 patients. The lungs of patients with COVID-19 have certain visual hallmarks such as ground-glass opacities and areas of increased density, both of which can be detected using CT and x-ray imaging. To further speed up this process, companies developing artificial intelligence solutions for the detection of respiratory diseases quickly tailored their software to differentiate COVID-19 from other respiratory infections, decreasing image analysis time to the matter of seconds. In order to prepare for the oncoming surge in COVID-19 patients and to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between patients in healthcare settings, healthcare systems around the world halted provision of "non-urgent" doctor visits, which extends to everything from cardiac patients to cancer treatments. This, combined with the public's concern and confusion around COVID-19 diagnosis, caused a huge increase in demand for digital health services.