Digitalization of the Oil and Gas Industry: Practical Lessons Learned from Digital Responses During the First Stage of the COVID-19 Outbreak

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency, arising from the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, affecting most of countries and territories around the world. The Chinese government had to implement drastic actions, placing Wuhan and nearby cities under quarantine and restricting travel. Pharmaceutical firms, biotech companies and universities were racing to contain the novel coronavirus and develop a treatment. In the battle against the disease outbreak named COVID-19, we could observe many successes of healthcare digitalization. For example, artificial intelligence has been applied for epidemic prediction and vaccine development, while wearable devices have been useful for personal health monitoring. These digital responses also uncover many limitations of existing systems, which affect digital collaborations and the effectiveness of technology deployment. These successes and failures are generally practical lessons for oil and gas (O&G) digitalization, and especially for the time when massive transformations are expected in the coming decade. This paper conducts a systematic review of O&G health risk management against infectious diseases. The analysis utilizes digital responses and evidence in the first stage of the COVID-19 (i.e. January and February) to evaluate the flexibility and resilience of O&G organizations facing epidemic prevention and control. This paper addresses the issue of standardization and alignment in cross-sector collaborations. In addition, some concerns related to data privacy and cybersecurity are investigated in the deployment of wearable health devices. These efforts ensure that digital epidemic management is appropriately implemented in the O&G workplace 4.0, and O&G digitalized systems can receive sufficient supports from different disciplines for future disease outbreaks.