The Role of Big Data in Analyzing the Covid-19 Fallout
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a new age of tragedy and innovation. As the world scrambles to recover from the fallout, many wonder if the epidemic left us with something worthwhile to look forward to.
While the Covid-19 highlighted several areas where we need to reform, such as healthcare and crisis response, it also enabled rapid tech, remote work, health solutions, and data analytics.
Leaders, innovators, and health care professionals acted quickly to leverage big data and analytics tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to comprehend the virus, control its spread, navigate changes, and track symptoms. Resulting in a year of technological marvels, innovations, development of strategic solutions, and the culmination of rich data resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic will subside as people gain access to effective vaccines across the world. However, the strategies and technological advancements of this period may carry on after the crisis ends. Big data analytics have been heavily featured in the global crisis response to COVID-19 infections. These technologies will likely continue to be an integral part of healthcare and crisis handling going forward.
Data Sets, Curation, and Questionnaires
Sidra Aziz, a Data Engineer and MSc. student at the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany, shared valuable insight into the work she and her team is currently doing using Big Data analytics:
“My team and I are currently working on an initiative involving Big Data and Covid-19. Our study is about the mental health effects of covid-induced lockdown on university students in Germany.”
She went on to elaborate the early discoveries and inferences made through this data set:
“On early findings, we have explored factors such as financial constraint, working odd jobs or part-time jobs, as well as targeting anxiety, mental health, and concern for loved ones in the home country. And how it has contributed a lot towards students’ mental health as well as their timelines of finishing the studies to begin a full-time job faster.”
University students are widely considered a vulnerable population. This image of the troubled student was established long before the pandemic due to high levels of anxiety, stress, depression, substance abuse, and disordered eating found in the youth compared to the general population.
When the nature of their educational experience dramatically changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the burden on this vulnerable population’s mental health was greatly amplified.
This is why Sidra’s work is so crucial. By understanding and recognizing the effects and negative impacts, higher educational institutions can take elaborate actions to support said students and ensure that the effects of the pandemic doesn’t damage the future of these students.
“While we are still gathering more data, these early results are aimed to have a broader understanding for universities and institutes not to help students better but also to be prepared for such unseen scenarios in the future if need be.
Our team aims to understand the sentiments of students’ replies to the questionnaire. Then predict their grades as the result of issues due to the pandemic and the current economy. That way, we can monitor the effects of the pandemic on student’s performance.”
Living in a World Forever Changed
Amid an unprecedented pandemic and facing an uncertain future, we’re all adjusting to rapid and drastic changes in our daily lives. As the fluctuating markets and the slow rise of the economy indicate, the pace of change is straining the well-oiled operations and infrastructure that hold our society together.
Hard though it may be, we innovators must drag ourselves away from the operational details of managing these hardships and look forward to new solutions and possibilities.
We need to soften the blow of shortened timelines and busted budgets while fundamentally redesigning how essential services are delivered to preserve society’s functions fully.
We have the technology, the resources, the data, and the computational force. All we need now is a sound deployment strategy and the collaborative efforts of our upcoming generation and that which is currently leading the world. To work towards a better, digitized, analyzed, and predictive world. So that we are never again caught off-guard by a pandemic or global disaster of this magnitude and are prepared with safety measures, innovative solutions, and coping strategies to navigate such situations.
Fighting The Covid-19 is an International Collective Effort
Since the first outbreak of the Covid-19, researchers and analysts are participating in data sharing and cooperation to understand and counteract the disease. This collaborative effort has lead to the development of the model for conditions beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
As the pandemic spread worldwide, researchers have started to aggregate large datasets that can be parsed using AI and machine learning. As the datasets are beginning to yield insights that may help providers treat SARS-CoV-2 infections and subsequent post-COVID syndromes, researchers involved say they hope their success will usher in a new era of collaboration in medical research.
“It’s great to see innovative technologies like Big Data are used to help fight this pandemic. The fight against COVID-19 is a group effort. We can’t rise from the destruction of this disease alone. The more we collaborate and widespread our efforts, the better and earlier we will redeem results.
Data is critical to understanding the impact of COVID-19 across the world. It is also vital to inform the appropriate planning, response, and resource allocation such as medical supplies, vaccine distributions, and food supplies.”
- Muazma Zahid (President, PWiC | Principal Engineering Manager, Microsoft)
