As a tech enthusiast, our columnist Markus Sekulla has been following how digital solutions can help manage the Corona crisis since the early stages of the pandemic. In addition to apps and vaccination cards, there have been quantum leaps, especially on the diagnostics side, that can help the healthcare industry even post-Corona.
Digital is always better! A sentence like that could certainly have come from me. Technical solutions for questions of communication and process optimization have always fascinated me. Of course, that didn't stop during the Corona era. My friends would even say it's gotten a little worse. My get goosebumps (not in a good way) when I hear the word fax or mail.
Fortunately, in the last few months, many clever minds have been thinking about how to digitally master Corona's problems - hashtag: diagnostics or contact tracking. We have already examined in detail on //next whether Corona can also be recognised by coughing, with a smartwatch or with the help of AI.
Today in part 4, we're talking about another digital form of Covid19 diagnostics: pupil analysis.
We've all had red eyes at one time or another. The happy ending at a movie, the classic bicycle-fly-eye accident, or sitting in front of the computer until the early hours. In some severe courses of COVID19, scientists have also reported red eyes. However, these courses can also be detected by more common symptoms. It becomes particularly interesting in asymptomatic patients. There, says Munich-based Semic RF, there are ways to detect whether one caught an infection with the Coronavirus via a smartphone scan. The accuracy is said to be 97 percent and the result is available after three minutes.
What I like is the abundance of solutions based on technologies such as artificial intelligence, which has the potential not only to fight Covid 19 but also be used for the diagnosis of other diseases.
Let’s change the scene for one second: April 2021 - In my circle of friends each household has antigen quick tests and if one visits – that is once a month I guess - then it is completely accepted that one waits 15 minutes after its quick test before one enters the place with a - naturally only - negative result.
No matter if it is a pupil scan, a cough test on the phone AI or quite analog antigen tests for home application. The more ways we have to test ourselves and possibly isolate quickly before infecting others, the better equipped we are to fight the pandemic. So, in this case digital is not necessarily better, also because the pupil scan will not initially be available for private use.
Text: Markus Sekulla
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