The e-Health research at Qatar University (QU) has developed several initiatives to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
They include a Covid-19 webpage; a web-based prediction system; the first Covid-19 Arabic Twitter dataset; a simulator for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and dynamic ventilator circuitry divider among others.
Prof Tamer Khattab, professor of electrical engineering, College of Engineering, noted that relying on their previous expertise and impactful outcomes, e-Health researchers at QU have directed their attention to the Covid-19 related research activities.
"The relevance between e-Health and Covid-19 stems mainly from the fact that remote health monitoring and artificial intelligence based diagnostics provide key solutions to the problem of overload on the health system due to surge in number of cases requiring medical attention because of the rapid infection rate of Covid-19,” says Prof Khattab in the latest edition of the QU research magazine.
According to Prof Khattab, the Covid-19 webpage enables tracking the total number of confirmed cases and the infection spread rate worldwide and in Qatar using official data from Ministry of Public Health. The page also provides simple key information on how to interpret the statistics and some information on major worldwide progress on treatment or vaccination activities.
The web-based prediction system for pandemic focal geolocations collects simple survey data from users to predict focal point of infection spread and inform this to the medical authorities to prepare for optimal locations of field hospitals and field tests.
The official noted that the first Covid-19 Arabic Twitter dataset is established through analysing Arabic tweets that mention Covid-19 and groups them according to time and location categories as well as applying more advanced data analytics.
Some of the interesting findings were the relation between time of the first tweets about Covid-19 from a certain city or country and time of the official announcement of first case of Covid-19 in the same city or country. This provides another key resource for data to support decision-making.
Another e-Health research is in the development of a simulator for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which is used to train medical and nursing staff to attach the ECMO to the body of the patient in the right way without having to try on an actual patient. The process itself is very delicate and requires several training sessions before the medical staff can master it. The process is needed to save lives of Covid-19 third stage patients.
The e-Health team has also developed a dynamic ventilator circuitry divider to enable sharing of the same ventilator main device between multiple patients, which guarantees protection against infection as well as efficient delivery of oxygen as per the need for each individual. This reduces the number of required ventilators per certain number of patients. The device has been developed as a joint effort between Qatar University and Hamad Hospital.
Prof Khattab pointed out that the research on e-Health has been ongoing at QU for more than seven years relying on internal university funding, external funding through the national priorities programme funded by Qatar National Research Fund and via partnership with Hamad Medical Corporation and Al-Ahli Hospital.
“Most of the research has focused on two main streams of remote health monitoring and digital health systems. While research on remote health monitoring has focused on increasing energy consumption efficiency, enhancing communication performance and security; research on digital health systems has focused on connected medical records, artificial intelligence based diagnostics and simulation based medical training,” he added.
Prof Tamer Khattab, professor of electrical engineering, College of Engineering, noted that relying on their previous expertise and impactful outcomes, e-Health researchers at QU have directed their attention to the Covid-19 related research activities.
"The relevance between e-Health and Covid-19 stems mainly from the fact that remote health monitoring and artificial intelligence based diagnostics provide key solutions to the problem of overload on the health system due to surge in number of cases requiring medical attention because of the rapid infection rate of Covid-19,” says Prof Khattab in the latest edition of the QU research magazine.
According to Prof Khattab, the Covid-19 webpage enables tracking the total number of confirmed cases and the infection spread rate worldwide and in Qatar using official data from Ministry of Public Health. The page also provides simple key information on how to interpret the statistics and some information on major worldwide progress on treatment or vaccination activities.
The web-based prediction system for pandemic focal geolocations collects simple survey data from users to predict focal point of infection spread and inform this to the medical authorities to prepare for optimal locations of field hospitals and field tests.
The official noted that the first Covid-19 Arabic Twitter dataset is established through analysing Arabic tweets that mention Covid-19 and groups them according to time and location categories as well as applying more advanced data analytics.
Some of the interesting findings were the relation between time of the first tweets about Covid-19 from a certain city or country and time of the official announcement of first case of Covid-19 in the same city or country. This provides another key resource for data to support decision-making.
Another e-Health research is in the development of a simulator for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which is used to train medical and nursing staff to attach the ECMO to the body of the patient in the right way without having to try on an actual patient. The process itself is very delicate and requires several training sessions before the medical staff can master it. The process is needed to save lives of Covid-19 third stage patients.
The e-Health team has also developed a dynamic ventilator circuitry divider to enable sharing of the same ventilator main device between multiple patients, which guarantees protection against infection as well as efficient delivery of oxygen as per the need for each individual. This reduces the number of required ventilators per certain number of patients. The device has been developed as a joint effort between Qatar University and Hamad Hospital.
Prof Khattab pointed out that the research on e-Health has been ongoing at QU for more than seven years relying on internal university funding, external funding through the national priorities programme funded by Qatar National Research Fund and via partnership with Hamad Medical Corporation and Al-Ahli Hospital.
“Most of the research has focused on two main streams of remote health monitoring and digital health systems. While research on remote health monitoring has focused on increasing energy consumption efficiency, enhancing communication performance and security; research on digital health systems has focused on connected medical records, artificial intelligence based diagnostics and simulation based medical training,” he added.
