Application of Information Technology Models, Approaches and Tools in Covid-19 Management: Rapid Review

Concurrent with the Covid-19 epidemic, many researches have been conducted to facilitate and expedite the diagnosis of disease, to establish vaccines and possible treatments and to understand the socio-economic effects of this disease. New technologies such as telemedicine, e-Health, virtual reality, expert systems and artificial intelligence prove to be effective in the progress and success of medical sciences and management of infectious diseases and epidemics like MERS and SARS.The purpose of this study is to review the applications of information technology in control and management of Covid-19. The study was a five-step rapid review based on the proposed Arksey and O'Malley framework. The search was performed in Cocrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science, Proquest, PubMed and Google Scholar on May first, 2020 using the eligible keywords and search strategy. 24 articles were selected for data extraction from 6,297 articles. The present study is the most complete study of technologies used in the field of Covid-19 Management. Most studies (58%) have shown the ability of artificial intelligence to detect patients with Covid-19 and identify lesions using CT images. Other studies have confirmed the effectiveness of telemedicine systems, electronic health records, expert systems and monitoring systems to reduce contact, rapid screening and proper disease management & control. Also, 46% of related studies have been conducted in China. Due to high spread of the Covid-19, the use of telemedicine technologies has been more tangible in order to maintain social distancing. Also, because of similarity of Covid-19 symptoms with other respiratory diseases, artificial intelligence applied for rapid screening and diagnosis. The results confirmed more application of these two systems. The results have proven the effectiveness of technology in quick patients’ identification, self-quarantine, diagnosis and monitoring of disease.