Space for Good: Special Report – June 2021
Telemedicine and Health
The
rapid rise of telemedicine has been one of the key areas for space-enabled services, with both the public and professionals aiming to minimize face-to-face contact due to COVID-19.
The pandemic gave additional impetus to the development and provision of telemedicine solutions that exploit space assets to enable remote diagnosis and treatment, reducing risk and time for patients and medical professionals, and providing essential services for remote areas. In one early example, a transportable diagnostics laboratory, developed at the University of Louvain in Belgium with ESA’s support and previously used during an Ebola outbreak in Guinea in 2014-2015, was sent to Italy to be used to test key workers for COVID-19. The B-LiFE lab (Biological Light Fieldable Laboratory for Emergencies) uses satellite communications, EO data and geo-positioning to enable real-time transmission of analytical results, communication with remote experts,
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© B-Life
transfer of large datasets and real-time epidemiological mapping.
