Innovations In The Time Of Calamity

Mankind has always been curious enough and has evolved with the changing times through
devising solutions to existing problems with genuine ideas and breakthrough innovations.
History is evident with ample inventions being risen out of calamity and how a human mind is
propelled to think out-of-box in challenging situations. Innovations in the time of calamity has
not been a new thing and as defined, it is articulation and implementation of a new idea in form
of a device or method which offers solution to the new emerging problems.

Amidst the current Corona virus threat, as the medical researchers are putting their best foot
forward to identify genomic sequence of the virus, creating vaccine, or development of rapid
diagnostic kits at the same time business leaders across the world are also coming up with
innovations in real time to mitigate the pandemic.

Technology has gone beyond imagination to innovate processes which enable public health
departments to better track disease, its spread, travel history and vital information of the
population which is vulnerable to the Covid-19. Today, the growth in connectivity across the
globe is tremendous offering access to the big data. Facebook has underpinned such innovation
by creating highly detailed population maps displaying demographics, density of population and
its travel pattern. These are already in use by American Red Cross group for disaster relief.
South Korea pioneered an innovative way of testing the novel corona virus at drive-through
counters’ testing process at Mc Donald’s and Starbucks where health workers in hazmat suit take
temperature and collects swab samples for testing the virus, passengers go through entire testing
process in few minutes within their car itself, results are shared through message on cell-phones.
Another Korean innovation is a mobile application which through GPS detects places where an
infected person has visited and helps to quarantine those areas. App is also being used for
self-quarantine process and anybody breaking the quarantine is detected.

Chinese Government has pioneered innovative ways in which drone technology can be
incorporated to alleviate corona threat, one being deployment of drones for aerial spraying of
disinfectants over affected areas and vehicles commuting to infected regions. Drone delivery of
medical testing samples reduced non-essential human contact and also speed up the process of
the test feedback reports. Drones are further extensively used in consumer goods item deliveries.
Not only drones but even robots are deployed to reduce burden on health-care professionals and
it carry tasks like taking patient’s temperatures, delivering the medicines and meals to patients
the way 5G enables bots are doing in Wuchang hospital.

Another innovation addresses the issue of social distancing which is must during this corona
crisis and it is quite interesting to know that a café in Thailand, ‘Art of Coffee’, has started an
innovative pulley system by installing a box pulled by rope and pulley to serve coffee at a
distance of over a meter to its customers under its social distancing policy to reduce close contact
between its staff and customers. The café further encourages digital payment to avoid any
infections through currency.

As suggested by experts, flattening the contagion growth curve will help support health-care
systems, CEOs of many supermarket chains, like Star-bazaar in India have started special
timings for elderly to shop, thereby reducing exposure of elderly people to infection. Dior and
Louis Vuitton, manufacturers of high-end perfumes and fragrance products have overnight
converted their production units to make hand sanitizers and started supplying it to French
hospitals for free and thus responding to challenging need with agility.

The list still going on as the different parts of the world equips itself with further preventive and
curative measures for tackling the present crisis but one thing is certain, every adversity in the
journey of human race has always given opportunity to innovate, think and inspire!