COVID-19 drives urgent innovation in healthcare
COVID-19 is a devastating pandemic impacting industries, social and personal lives, but it is also prompting trailblazing of creativity in developing products to combat the virus, tracking and predicting its spread.
Top- notch Sri Lankan healthcare innovator, Jendo Innovations has developed an app called ‘ Work Again’ for post COVID- 19 – when people resume working and go into offices.
“This is an app which can assess the risk of a person when in contact with others who may have contracted the virus. We aim to have a sustainable working model with this app for offices and institutions,” Keerthi Kodithuwakku, CEO Jendo Innovations Pvt Ltd, told the Business Times.
“The app will monitor the movement of the person and if he/she unknowingly is in contact with a COVID- 19 positive person, this app will send an alert to the person and the HR department of the company that he/ she is working in,” Mr. Kodithuwakku explained.
It’s a B to B app, he said noting that the company had discussions with private sector hospitals and other private company HR departments in this regard and discussions were positive.
The company has also started a research to monitor the impact of the current patient management methods used in COVID-19. “With the COVID-19 task force, we are monitoring and verifying certain effects of treatments that are currently ongoing in hospitals,” Vinod Samarawickrama, Director Jendo Innovations Pvt Ltd, said.
The app is a device which will carry out the quantification of the management methods used in virus treatment and through this, a monitoring management mechanism for COVID-19 is being built.
The device will be attached to the finger and will be monitoring the effect of the disease’s management methods such as inhalation and steaming by identifying the heart rate and the oxygen rate of the blood flow etc, Mr. Kodithuwakku added.
These devices might even help to prevent future pandemics and revolutionise healthcare, if scaled up and adopted widely.