IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July/August 2021 - 25

such as CCTV cameras, smartphones (with GPS
and set of sensors), wearable devices when
uploaded to the cloud, and given to AI models,
can reveal whether people are following the
protocols or not. For example, it candetect people
venturing outside the designated quarantine
zone. If found violating guidelines, an alert
will be sent to the concerned authorities. Similarly,
a wearable designed specifically for
patients in isolation can continuously record
various health parameters (heart rate, temperature,
respiratory rate, oxygen level, bodymovement,
and much more). All these recorded
parameters are then sent to the cloud via Internet
gateways, where it is analyzed using AI/ML
models. If AI models find or predict that
patients in isolation or ward may enter into a
critical condition, staff or center is immediately
informed via an alarm. The list of patients who
may be shifted to ICU or need emergency medical
assistance can be created and circulated to
healthcare stations in an automated way. The
IoT and AI-powered voice assistance can also
be enhanced for recording speech and coughing
to determine the infection. Thus, IoT- and
AI-driven solutions will monitor the lakhs of
people at an unprecedented rate and assist the
authorities in properly implementing protocols
and assisting patients in isolation.
2) Drones and robots: The drones are used as an
" eye in the sky " for surveillance to effectively
enforce the lockdown. It can help monitor
the quarantined people and check whether
they are complying with the protocol or not.
The entire drone operations can be coordinated
from a central control room. The drone
operation can also be set up in an automated
way. The powerful cameras (including night
visions) mounted on drones captured
high-resolution images/videos, which are
uploaded to the cloud using highspeed connectivity
(4G/5G). These data on the cloud
are given to the AI/ML-powered facial recognition
and object detection models to identify
violations and violators in real-time and
send alarms on mobile applications. In addition
to surveillance, drones can also be used
as megaphones to spread awareness and
help deliver essential goods and medical supplies
to lockdown and quarantine areas.
July/August 2021
Figure 6. Technologies for lockdown, quarantine,
and isolation.
Robots may be used to deliver medicines and
food to infected patients in isolation wards.
Another set of robots can be deployed for the
regular sanitization of quarantine centers and
isolation wards. These robots can coordinate
with drones for better surveillance and supplies.
3) Blockchain: Blockchain can also be helpful
(as an integrated solution with IoT and AI) to
record some of the important transactions of
the aforementioned tasks of surveillance,
supply, and assistance in those areas. For
example, it can help record transactions of
protocol violations and health parameters in
critical conditions.
The generic view of technology-driven solution
for these purposes is shown in Figure 6.
CASE STUDY: ICT FOR COVID-19
TRANSMISSION NETWORK ANALYSIS
In this section, with the help of an experimental
study, we demonstrate how ICT can help in
understanding the COVID-19 transmissions, disease
outbreaks, and pathogen transmissions in a
population. If done at the early stage of virus
transmissions, such analysis can help prevent
local and community transmission. We investigate
the early stage of COVID-19 transmission in
Kerala, State of India (case study), using the connection
structure. For this purpose, we used
open-source data made publicly available by
covid19india.org till 12:40 A.M. IST of 11th April
2020. Data were collected using the provided API
and were processed to derive the relational
information. Transmission network analysis
25
http://www.covid19india.org
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