Transformation in Health Sector During Pandemic by Photonics Devices

The scientific and technical sectors saw the necessity for innovative solutions as the effects of COVID-19 on society became clear. More basic research endeavors with long-term and significant effects have focused on the creation of novel diagnostics and the acceleration of vaccines. Researchers from many walks of life got together to tackle this problem in a truly global effort. In the medium term, efforts have focused on repurposing current technologies and utilizing additive manufacturing techniques to overcome shortages in safety equipment and disinfection. The development of innovative diagnostics and the acceleration of vaccines have been the focus of more basic research initiatives with an impact in the middle and lengthy. As a vital technology, photonics has supported all efforts, both directly and indirectly, to combat this type of pandemic. This viewpoint will provide an outline of the crucial part the photonics society played in the COVID-19 pandemic and talk about how the photonics society could assist in preventing future pandemic viruses. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

The Need for an Adaptive Sociotechnical Model for Managing Mental Health in a Pandemic

Many people experienced an increase in mental health distress due to the isolation requirements arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic and the resulting isolation protocols to control the spread of the virus no doubt, sparked researchers' interest in seeking solutions to address the impact on people's mental health in different situations. One of such solutions is the use of technologies to cope with mental health challenges. Though a plethora of technology exists for communication and socialization with several others proposed to deal with mental health breakdown during the pandemic, there is no 'one-size fits all' technology that has been identified to address every individual's distress level and coping strategy. This study thus, examines the existing technologies that have been used by people to manage their mental health distress, and proposes a sociotechnical model that can be used to identify current technologies and the effectiveness of such technologies in addressing an individual's mental health distress and symptoms. © 2022 IEEE.

Evaluation of the Performance of an Immersive System for Tele-education

Tele-education was already a solution for people who cannot attend lessons in person (such as inaccessibility in rural areas or illness issues). However, COVID has revealed problems in tele-education with current technology, causing adolescents and children to slow down their learning curves and experience problems of social distancing with their classmates. This paper presents a user study to validate an immersive communication system for tele-education purposes. This system streams in real time a class using 360-degree cameras, allowing remote students to explore the whole scene and improving the feeling of being in the classroom with their colleagues. Additionally, the prototype provides notifications to the remote students about events (such as a changes in the teacher's presentation or classmates raising their hands) that occur outside their viewport to indicate in which direction they should move their heads to visualize them. To validate the system and investigate its possible added value, socioemotional factors such as presence, perceived quality, usability, and usefulness of the notifications were evaluated through a user test using questionnaires. The obtained results show that using immersive tele-education systems can improve the presence, as well as the benefits of the notifications on the experience of the remote students. © 2022 ACM.

A Novel Approach for Tracking the Spread of COVID-19 Disease and Discovering the Symptom Patterns of COVID-19 Patients Using Association Rule Mining

Coronavirus disease also known as COVID-19 is an infectious disease which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. People who get infected by the virus will experience respiratory diseases and might recover easily, but few will become seriously ill and require medical attention. Top researchers from across the world are working on cures for it. A lot of research is being conducted on the spread of the disease and cures for it. Only developing cure for this virus would not be enough. With the current technology, advanced data mining techniques can be used to track and trace the virus which is quicker and faster solution which will change the course of the pandemic. The rate at which people are getting affected, tracking becomes vital. It is necessary to alert a person when they are near the infected person. With the help of GPS and Bluetooth technologies, the users are alerted. Data mining also known as knowledge discovery of data, is the process of analyzing huge chunks of data in different ways and converting it into useful information. This process plays a significant role in various fields with vast data. Healthcare industries generate and store large amounts of data like name of the patient, disease, diagnosis method, resources, this is where data mining techniques can be applied. So the data which can be obtained from COVID datasets can be used by healthcare industries to improve the tracking and spreading of COVID-19. We propose a method to identity patterns using the factors in the dataset which can be used to predict if a person having similar symptoms is affected by the virus or not. Clustering, association rule mining, classification and other various data science concepts are used to analyze the spread of COVID in India. © 2022 IEEE.

Pandemic Economics: Problems and Prospects

The COVID-19 coronavirus poses a considerable and unexpected challenge to the global economy and the economy of each nation, even though specialists have repeatedly warned of a possible virus pandemic and the need for preparations. In the present work, the economic situation in pandemic conditions is analyzed in historical perspective. The associated problems and barriers are identified, and the potential impact on business processes is sketched. Possible approaches to improving the post-virus economy and the world as a whole are proposed.