Cloud Computing, artificial intelligence and big data against Covid-19 contagion clusters
C-Sentinel is the project of intelligent thermoscanners 100% made in Italy
Artificial intelligence, big data and Cloud Computing are proving to be fundamental in the fight against the spread of the Covd-19 epidemic and, specifically, the emergence of new clusters of contagion. What? Through a 100% made in Italy technology that comes from the synergy between “Omitech”, a company based in Padua that has been operating in the field of Cloud Computing for years, and the “Smact Competence Center” that is a competence center for industry 4.0 created by 40 partners including universities and research centers in the northeast that has already been adopted in the offices of Unioncamere del Veneto.
Since the first months of the pandemic, Smact, of which “Omitech” is a partner, has systematized the research skills of five different departments of the University of Padua, to give the temperature readings of the thermo-scanner network a monitoring function for general health and a tool for the detection of criticalities. Thanks also and above all to Unioncamere del Veneto which decided to support the project and be among the first to adopt it with the installation of 11 devices integrated into its offices. But the project, with the involvement of two new partners and the implementation of new tools, is ready to move on to the next stages and be installed in factories, schools, public offices and shops.
Specifically, the project is called C-Sentinel and uses precision thermoscanners classified as Class 1 medical devices which, thanks to innovative technologies applied to the health field such as IoT, Big data and Cloud computing, collect health data anonymously and make them available to prevent new clusters of contagion from being triggered.
Now let’s see how this precious technological tool at the service of public health works specifically and above all why it is so important. Among the probable early symptoms of Covid-19 is fever and therefore the detection of body temperature takes on a double value: it offers guarantees to the manager of shared spaces with respect to the protection of users and the integrity of the spaces themselves, on the other hand it allows those who frequent them a greater level of trust, an essential element in view of the return to a life as similar as possible to the one we had before the Coronavirus epidemic.
Through this temperature monitoring infrastructure, C-Sentinel collects and aggregates the data generated, but anonymously and in total respect of privacy. In this way, this tool is able to offer health institutions a real-time and forecasting tool of the trend of contagion symptoms in the area.
In this discourse there is another element on which it is worth focusing attention: security. In fact, C-Sentinel pays particular attention to the issue of Cybersecurity because the transmission and storage of temperature data are protected through the implementation of intrusion detection and anomaly detection systems, aimed at minimizing potential data leak risks.
After an initial phase of experimentation, which was a great success, the project enters a new “era” by evolving and perfecting itself with the involvement of “Italtronic”, a Padua-based company that produces professional containers for electronic devices, and “Sanmarco Informatica”, another Vicenza-based company that designs and manufactures digital and intelligent software solutions. Thus, on the one hand, the optimized hardware of “Italtronic” will collect the information that “Omitech” will bring to the Cloud, while the software of “Sanmarco” Informatica will be able to manage the information process according to specific needs and company policies.
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In this moment of health emergency, we have made ourselves available to support projects that put new 4.0 technologies at the service of protecting public health
,” comments Fabrizio Dughiero, Chairman of the Management Board of the Competence Center the effective use of the potential of IoT, Big Data, cloud computing can be fundamental to develop innovative solutions that contribute to the prevention of contagion. Nurturing an innovation ecosystem is precisely the goal of SMACT, which was created as a connection platform for private and public innovation, facilitating the transfer of skills between companies and with universities”.
