The Role of Digital Technology in Responding to COVID-19 Pandemic: Saudi Arabia’s Experience

Abstract

Introduction:The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a single-chain ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus. As of March 25, 2021, the total number of positive cases and fatalities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) had reached 386,300 and 6624, respectively, with a case fatality rate of 1.71%. The KSA was among the leading nations to heed the advice of WHO officials and put strict precautionary and preventive measures in place to curb the early spread of COVID-19 before it was declared a global pandemic. Methodology: This was an uncontrolled before-after study following a mixed-method approach for data collection. National and regional data were extracted from the Health Electronic Surveillance Network (HESN), a centralized public health collection system for quantitative and statistical data. Quantitative and qualitative methods have been utilized in studying data derived from tech media. Results: The Saudi authorities utilized different technological tools to aid in managing and combating the COVID-19 pandemic. In the case of Al Madinah Al Mounawarah, after the implementation of several technologies, the most important being Tawakkalna, the number of active daily cases decreased by 61%. Conclusion:The use of the Tawakkalna application was proven to be a successful method in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in the KSA. This vital and essential experience warrants the use of different digital technology that offers a personalized profile displaying the person's status (affected, vaccinated, or no history of infection). This application played and will continue to play a crucial and effective role in pandemic containment in Saudi Arabia.

Perspectives on Telemedicine during the Era of COVID-19; What Can Saudi Arabia Do?

“…Saudi Arabia was not far from putting telemedicine in practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia and the private sector had developed several telemedicine services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic as a part of the Saudi Vision (2030) that managed to invest in digital health and provide innovative digital solutions for the increasing need for healthcare [9,31,32]. These digital healthcare services have attracted more than two million users and were efficiently incorporated into healthcare services in the country [31].…”

“…These regulations made face-to-face medical consultation even harder. Like most countries worldwide, the increasing need for healthcare in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 pandemic was faced with a diminished capacity of medical practice and limited access to healthcare [8,9].…”

“…To fill this gap, several digital solutions have been suggested. With the dramatic improvement in telecommunication technologies, telemedicine has become one of these solutions that can allow healthcare workers to interactively communicate with distant patients to provide them with diagnostic and therapeutic services [9][10][11][12][13][14]. In this context, this review article aims to discuss the uses, delivery approaches, and characteristics of telemedicine and highlight the potential benefits of telemedicine for the Saudi healthcare system.…”

Research Trends on the Application of Information Technologies and Digital Innovations during Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Furthermore, in the area of infection screening, artificial intelligence (AI), thermal cameras, and various smartphone applications were utilized in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Iceland. Although the effectiveness of such measures is inconclusive, they failed to detect asymptomatic individuals [23].…”

Effectiveness of containment strategies in preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission

“…Subsequently, digital contact tracing (DCT) was piloted in a few countries and subnational regions to track case exposure, vaccination status and test results [22] . This intervention was reported to be more effective in controlling the spread of the infection [22] , [23] , [24] . However, the relative efficacy of different control measures remains unknown.…”