Smart shield, software developed in Oman to help in fight against COVID-19

Smart shield, software developed in Oman to help in fight against COVID-19

Muscat: A smart mask that detects patient's temperatures, and programmes that sort COVID admissions on the basis of the severity of symptoms, have been developed by a university in Oman to help the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Created by Dr Abraham Varghese and Dr Huda Al Shuaily from the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, the research behind these projects was made possible through funding from the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation. Two separate computer programmes were developed: One determines how far COVID-19 has progressed in patients, with conditions ranging from mild to critical, and the other, on the basis of presenting symptoms, determines the urgency with which patients need to be admitted to intensive care. Mathematical modelling and machine learning were used to develop the software, which will help optimise patient care and ensure healthcare providers can treat them more efficiently. "The team formulated a deterministic compartmental model including various stages of infection (such as mild, moderate, severe and critical) to study the spread of COVID-19 and estimated the model parameters by fitting the data of the ongoing pandemic in Oman," said Varghese. "It consists of nine nonlinear differential equations that took into account the susceptible