WASHINGTON, USA: Bull-Connect technology (for remote monitoring of pigs) in Israel, or following pink/purple dots on Google maps; with H1NI, technology’s role has also gone contagious and contiguous across the world.

Talking of technology, IT in healthcare may not be a new gene now. And of course not for SAP, that says to have a lot of hospitals using hospital care management and other such technology enablers across the world.
But the DNA gets a new twist in times like these where epidemics like SARS, or the recent HINI scare dominate headlines and hospital lobbies the world over. How pandemic is the application of technology in such times?

Franz Aman, Vice President Product Marketing, SAP BusinessObjects tells that there’s a lot that is happening. Even if not so much in the treatment frontiers, then too, quite significantly and impactfully in the diagnosis and pre-emptive tracking terrains, as his answer explains. Areas like symptom tracking and geographical pattern mapping are the most in focus, it appears.

Swine Flu_summary by county

SAP in ASAP

In India too, the impact of the pandemic has burgeoned and stirred Government and medical fabric of the nation into action.

Technology can play a key role here to predict the next outbreak areas of swine flu and hence accordingly the medical authorities can be well prepared to handle the number of emergencies and act on it accordingly.

SAP has been currently working with governments and medical authorities globally in various areas, it seems.
These include spotting an epidemic brewing long before doctors and nurses would ever be able to; predict next outbreak path (geographical locations) and to analyze symptoms like nausea, fever etc.
 
In India both public and private partnerships need to resort to technology to effectively address a pandemic.

“We have been working with an organization called EMA (Emergency Medical Associates) for a number of years. Here, the role is to understand all symptoms going on in any emergency case, along with detailed demographics, time-based analysis etc. All this gives a good pattern of symptoms so you can see the evolution of this pattern and act accordingly.” Explains Aman.

He also tells that this analysis helps in arriving at a geographical layer sketch, which for instance can be very handy in mapping how Flu traveled from one part of the globe to another.

This is notable as unlike any other influenza virus that takes about 25 weeks to spread across the planet, H1N1 has reached almost all continents in just about nine weeks. No doubt WHO (World Health Organisation) has termed it a pandemic.

In fact, in a media report in April 2009, it was clearly pointed out that it is vital to track the spread of the virus in order for mitigating the effects and apart from vaccines and antivirals, other crucial role here is donned by communications technologies. This covers monitoring the virus, distributing accurate health information, and quelling outbreaks.

Swine Flu summary all sites

BI’s role, how effective?