A Comprehensive Review of the Technological Solutions to Analyse the Effects of Pandemic Outbreak on Human Lives

Abstract

A coronavirus outbreak caused by a novel virus known as SARS-CoV-2 originated towards the latter half of 2019. COVID-19’s abrupt emergence and unchecked global expansion highlight the inability of the current healthcare services to respond to public health emergencies promptly. This paper reviews the different aspects of human life comprehensively affected by COVID-19. It then discusses various tools and technologies from the leading domains and their integration into people’s lives to overcome issues resulting from pandemics. This paper further focuses on providing a detailed review of existing and probable Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Blockchain-based solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic brings several challenges from the viewpoint of the nation’s healthcare, security, privacy, and economy. AI offers different predictive services and intelligent strategies for detecting coronavirus signs, promoting drug development, remote healthcare, classifying fake news detection, and security attacks. The incorporation of AI in the COVID-19 outbreak brings robust and reliable solutions to enhance the healthcare systems, increases user’s life expectancy, and boosts the nation’s economy. Furthermore, AR/VR helps in distance learning, factory automation, and setting up an environment of work from home. Blockchain helps in protecting consumer’s privacy, and securing the medical supply chain operations. IoT is helpful in remote patient monitoring, distant sanitising via drones, managing social distancing (using IoT cameras), and many more in combating the pandemic. This study covers an up-to-date analysis on the use of blockchain technology, AI, AR/VR, and IoT for combating COVID-19 pandemic considering various applications. These technologies provide new emerging initiatives and use cases to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we discuss challenges and potential research paths that will promote further research into future pandemic outbreaks.