Leveraging Digital Transformation Technologies to Tackle COVID-19: Proposing a Privacy-First Holistic Framework

Gökalp, Ebru; Kayabay, Kerem; Gökalp, Mert Onuralp

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused unprecedented shocks to public health and economies around the world. The emergent technologies creating digital transformation across all industries have started to transform businesses in the last years. Although utilized by the healthcare industry before COVID-19, some of these technologies gained significant attention since they can alleviate the pandemic crisis. A holistic framework can still help (1) understand the relationship between fragmented technology solutions, (2) figure out how to combine fragmented solutions, (3) integrate data sources, and (4) introduce integrated digital solutions. Correspondingly, we explore the use of emergent technologies by proposing a privacy-first holistic framework by integrating digital transformation technologies to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework consists of data sources, technologies, users, applications for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, and users. We then discuss the benefits and challenges of the framework. The proposed framework aims to provide a more efficient and dynamic healthcare system to reduce the death toll, the risk of virus transmission, and healthcare givers’ workload and stress levels.