Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Sep 8, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 8, 2022 - Nov 3, 2022
Date Accepted: Mar 7, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
May infrared thermometers hold the promise for effective early warnings for emerging respiratory infectious diseases?
ABSTRACT
Background:
Major respiratory infectious diseases such as influenza, SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 have caused historical global pandemics with severe disease and economic burdens. Early warning and timely intervention are key to suppress such outbreaks.
Objective:
We aim to propose a theoretical framework of a community-based early warning system that will proactively detect temperature abnormalities in the community based on a collective network of infrared thermometers-enabled smartphone devices.
Methods:
We developed a framework of a community-based early warning system (EWS) and demonstrated its operation by a schematic flow-chart. We also emphasized the potential feasibilities and obstacles of the EWS.
Results:
Overall, the framework utilises advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology on cloud computing platforms to identify the probability of an outbreak timely. It hinges on the detection of geospatial temperature abnormalities in the community, including mass data collection, cloud-based computing and analysis, decision-making and feedback. The EWS may be feasible with the considerations of its public acceptance, technical practicality and value-for-money for implementation. However, it is important that the proposed framework is to work in parallel or in combination with other early warning mechanisms due to a relatively long initial model training process.
Conclusions:
The framework, if implemented, may provide an important tool for important decisions of early prevention and control of respiratory diseases for health stakeholders. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.