India today reached the second slot in the COVID-19 Roll of Shame. It has been led by the US headed by the iconic master of mismanagement, the incumbent President. The efforts in India since March has been humungous with initial successes. The battle for livelihood being equally important things were eased. A nation being in permanent lockdown has its own far reaching consequences. The revamping of medical infrastructure needed to happen and so also its extension to small towns and the rural countryside. Large number of cases are now coming from those areas. Another worrying factor is that we are adding the maximum caseload in the world.

Does some secrets lie deep in the databases created out of the treatment of COVID-19 patients? Some sundry tables, graphs and diagrams are not even the beginning of the thought process of what use this data can be put into. Leave aside the utility of research, we will at least know as to what data needs to be collated beyond the requirements of the conventional medical records section. What access to medical data needs to provided to kith and kin of the patient while the treatment is on. The patient cannot be reached. Tragedy of information also befalls them. That medical data beyond the discharge summary is required for lots of other purposes.

Even the discharge summary data is all individual in nature. The best medical solutions in the US before the COVID-19 were provided by Data Scientists, then why not for this disease? Individual doctor based or single hospital based learning and at times some expert gyan or stray research is not going to help. With the scare all around the doctors are not ready to stray from the standard operating procedure. Resident doctors, the mainstay cannot be expected to do wonders, nor can the ones in smaller places and also smaller hospitals. Even with best of gadgets, they have to deliver. Contagion being a fact cannot lower down the levels of treatment transparency.

Why patients come late for admission? Why so many deaths happen within one or two days of admission? Why there is an intense deterioration at times? The story of the comorbidity cannot be left at that level itself. The variety and stages of comorbidity and it’s impact on treatment? Are doctors able to give sufficient time and application of mind? The multifarious impact on health professionals? The ICU is full of gadgets and hence second to second data, is it being harnessed? If and where is it being stored and at what granularity? Is there a unified data warehouse. How is it being used for improving the treatment in an unfolding area of medical crisis. Can data collaboration happen at a gigantic level. Big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, if used in the right manner can throw up patterns, correlations and finally predictions which will turn out to be of immense help in the battle against COVID-19.

COVID-19 MEDICAL DATA NEEDS TO CLINICALLY TREATED FOR WORTHWHILE RESULTS.

Sanjay Sahay Ex-IPS
Founder Director - TechConPro Pvt. Ltd.
https://sahaysdailypost.com
https://www.techconpro.in