Mathematical realization of diagnosing COVID-19 using Boolean Algebra on an array of colds-related symptoms

COVID-19 has caused countless deaths across the globe. In developing countries like the Philippines, limited access to health services like ICU beds and PCR tests contributed more to COVID-19 related deaths. It is for this reason that the researchers developed a simple COVID-19 diagnostic tool using basic logic gates to determine whether one has COVID-19 or other related illnesses like flu, colds, and allergy. The researchers first collected information regarding the common symptoms of COVID-19 and similar diseases. The identified symptoms cough, fever, fatigue, loss of taste, and smell were used as the inputs for the circuit, while CODI-19 and other related diseases served as the output. The classification of symptoms was divided into often, sometimes, rarely, and never. In order to generate binary digits, often and sometimes were considered positive symptoms (1) while rarely and never were considered negative (0). Minterms were determined through the truth table of the conceptualized circuit. Furthermore, these are used to generate the Karnaugh map. Consequently, simplifying the Boolean expression for each output variable. This is a mathematical realization through Boolean algebra. Through the logic circuit created from Boolean expression, the researchers were able to successfully predict the expected disease based on the existence of symptoms. Furthermore, the researchers were able to translate the circuit into its complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) counterpart. While the designed tool is affordable and can be easily implemented, however, it still possesses a limitation as other COVID-19 positive patients are asymptomatic. Furthermore, the diagnostic tool was not tested on realworld data. Hence, the accuracy of the tool is based on theoretical experiments only. Received : Feb. 17, 2022 Revised : March 29, 2022 Accepted : April 14, 2022 K E Y W O R D S COVID-19, Logic gates, Boolean Algebra, CMOS, Diagnostic tool Suggested Citation (APA Style 7 th Edition): Kim, D. , Chiang Yu, M.N. S. , Vicerra, R.R. , Naguib, R.N. G. & Concepcion, R.II. (2022). Mathematical realization of diagnosing COVID-19 using Boolean Algebra on an array of colds-related symptoms. International Research Journal of Science, Technology, Education, and Management, 2(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6496731 International Research Journal of Science, Technology, Education, and Management Volume 2, No. 1 | April 2022 2 https://irjstem.com INTRODUCTION The two main keywords that describe the Philippines’ health system are decentralization and devolution. Even though the Department of Health (DOH) controls and leads the entire system, the services and facilities of the public hospitals are taken care of by the local government units. This current health system began with the implementation of the local government code in 1991 to provide immediate and specialized medical care to the public but its effectiveness remains in question (Bayani & Tan, 2021). Despite their effort, hospitals in the Philippines are unevenly distributed. There are only ten beds and six doctors available for every 10,000 people, and it is even worse in provincial areas where there is usually only one medicine practitioner per 20,000 patients. Consequently, the medical equipment and supplies are highly limited as well. There have been improvements in terms of medical capacity over the past few years, but it was only beneficial to high-income individuals (Amit et al., 2021). Because of the common occurrence of typhoons, most of the local government’s disaster protocol only focuses on natural disasters such as flooding. When COVID-19 hit the country, the government’s first response was travel restrictions and community quarantine which directly affected the average Filipinos (Amit et al., 2021). At the same time, the World Bank predicted the Philippines would experience the largest economic depression among the Southeast Asian countries, and it became a reality. By September of the said year, its economy crumpled by 10 percent which is even worse than the World Bank’s prediction. As a result, nearly 3 million Filipinos became poor (Cho, et al., 2021). This also affected the health of the Filipinos because, during the same time, the cost of the RTPCR test was about 10,000 pesos which are equivalent to 200 dollars. One even needed to go through a strict procedure just to take the test, so most people gave up on taking the test even though they had symptoms of COVID-19 (Bekema, 2021). COVID-19 is a respiratory illness which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (World Health Organization, 2022). Meanwhile, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a transmittable and viral infection that was first observed in China in 2003 (Smith, 2020). SARS is caused by a group of viruses called coronavirus. Just like the flu, SARS exhibits symptoms such as fever, chills, headache, and diarrhea (Mayo Clinic, n.d.). More specifically, SARS is caused by SARS CoV (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2005). However, it is important to note that flu and SARS are not the same. In relation to COVID-19, the virus causing it is SARS-CoV-2, which is just a mutated form of SARS-CoV. According to the World Health Organization (2022), the symptoms and side effects of COVID-19 range from mild to moderately severe only, without the need for hospitalizations and any special treatments. However, the symptoms are more aggravated for old individuals or those that experience prior diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA,2021), the leading cause of death in the Philippines is cardiovascular-related diseases. Furthermore, in a report published by Bloomberg (2021), the Philippines ranked last among 53 countries in terms of pandemic response and resiliency. These two are among the countless reasons for the high hospitalization and death rate in the Philippines. According to the statistics released by the Department of Health (2022), as of February 9, 2022, there are over 50,000 deaths recorded due to COVID-19 cases. It is for these reasons that a cheaper, yet effective way is needed to overcome this ongoing pandemic. One of the solutions is the use of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology because it is often used in the field of medical diagnosis. In fact, there are several medical devices like lab-on-a-chip devices that are based on CMOS technology to accurately diagnose contagious diseases (Forouhi & Ghafar-Zadeh, 2020).