I was president of the IET for 2016-17, and have been asked by government to gather practical and innovative ideas from our Engineering communities. So, please enter any ideas you might have in this thread that might help address and mitigate the Covid-19 crisis. Ideas might include digital tracking / monitoring through therapy equipment and beyond. Even ideas outside your usual expertise domain will be welcome. Now’s the time for Engineering to show we can change the world!
In the short term, focusing on the Ventilators challenge, the common thread among most of the responses so far is about making the right information available to the widest range of relevant, supply-chain audiences in an intelligent way, in order to promote valuable action rather than sustain uncertainty. This feels right, and something which intelligent digitalisation might accelerate. For example:
A managed, open-source styled, design authority.
Coordinated information on manufacture, logistics, assembly, testing, shipping, support, recycling?
Is blockchain technology too challenging in the required timeframes, or can it build confidence rapidly (for this and future manufacturing effort)?
Longer term, it is presumably too early to predict what the impact of COVID-19 will be, which will only become clearer once we can gauge steady state responses across the population as we strive to return to 'normal' economic activity. In this context, engineering seems well placed to contribute to mapping out how the systems and enterprise architecture of modern life can or will need to adjust if responding to infections needs to be sustained far into the future, with containment permanently in mind. Relevant topics might include:
Transportation
Testing
Localised community response equipment and procedures
Social distancing 'monitoring' - at a simple level perhaps around occupancy density in buildings.
And maybe COVID-19 is the required nudge for transformation of our built environment / urban areas / high streets in the 21st Century:
A proportion of office and retail space migrating to environmentally-aware 'living' space.
Cleaner, lower-cost transportation solutions that capitalise on the reduced demand for commute journeys that the current encouraged / enforced remote working might signpost.
In the short term, focusing on the Ventilators challenge, the common thread among most of the responses so far is about making the right information available to the widest range of relevant, supply-chain audiences in an intelligent way, in order to promote valuable action rather than sustain uncertainty. This feels right, and something which intelligent digitalisation might accelerate. For example:
A managed, open-source styled, design authority.
Coordinated information on manufacture, logistics, assembly, testing, shipping, support, recycling?
Is blockchain technology too challenging in the required timeframes, or can it build confidence rapidly (for this and future manufacturing effort)?
Longer term, it is presumably too early to predict what the impact of COVID-19 will be, which will only become clearer once we can gauge steady state responses across the population as we strive to return to 'normal' economic activity. In this context, engineering seems well placed to contribute to mapping out how the systems and enterprise architecture of modern life can or will need to adjust if responding to infections needs to be sustained far into the future, with containment permanently in mind. Relevant topics might include:
Transportation
Testing
Localised community response equipment and procedures
Social distancing 'monitoring' - at a simple level perhaps around occupancy density in buildings.
And maybe COVID-19 is the required nudge for transformation of our built environment / urban areas / high streets in the 21st Century:
A proportion of office and retail space migrating to environmentally-aware 'living' space.
Cleaner, lower-cost transportation solutions that capitalise on the reduced demand for commute journeys that the current encouraged / enforced remote working might signpost.
