Medicine needs to prepare for pandemics worse than COVID-19

The current global response to COVID-19 would not have been possible without telecommunications. But we need more innovation in telecommunications to build the medical infrastructure we need to deal with pandemics. society will need tools to better prepare for future pandemics that can arrive more frequently and be even more deadly than COVID-19. Possible ideas include:

• Internet of Health Things: We need scale population data to help detect and measure pandemic incidence. One example is Kinsa, a smart thermometer that uploads patient temperature to a cloud database This has already been used in Florida to detect possible COVID-19 hot spots. Many more such tools can be developed, including at-home antibody testing or, in the future, even nucleic acid testing.
• Tele-screening. A lot of resources (personal protective equipment and health care worker time) go into testing and screening to identify patients needing hospital care versus those that can recover at home. Good telemedicine-based screening tools can reduce this burden significantly.

[Arogyaswami Paulraj invented and advanced MIMO wireless technology, which now powers all mobile and WiFi networks]

As the internet becomes our economic, educational and social window to the world, six innovators that built this critical technology give their thoughts on our post-pandemic future. These visionaries are part of the Marconi Society, a foundation that inspires and connects those creating new technology for a digitally inclusive world.