How the use of artificial intelligence can shift the course of the COVID-19 Epidemic.
As the confirmed cases rise alongside the deaths caused by the new strain of coronavirus, the uncertainty of the future grows stronger with many leaders seeking alternative options in a growing industry, artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence has a history of being a major help in times of medical crisis, from the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease to detecting skin cancer. AI have been trained to analyse and learn patterns of illnesses from the data of thousands of patients and can often successfully predict the course of a person’s illness. Artificial intelligence has been a major help in the medical industry and detected thousands of illness, diseases and health issues. Because of its complexity and efficiency, many world leaders think that artificial intelligence can be a tremendous game-changer in the fight against COVID-19.
Various universities, scientific-oriented researchers and tech companies are pulling their weight in investing AI technology specific to the pandemic response. Large known names like Google and Microsoft are already doing large trials, combining human experts with machines in order to fight this epidemic. The funding that artificial intelligence receives from large and well-known companies like google has increased the rate of progression by a large factor.
China has also been making a significant progress in the field with their AI developed warning system, ingrained to identify the emerging risk from COVID-19. The system, formally known as BLUEDOT, scans consistently through 100.000 officials and mass media sources in 65 languages each day to detect outbreaks in real time, giving many countries the time and resources needed to combat the disease.
Image shown displays what countries have known cases of the virus. The program helped detect the virus, which informed countries to take protective measures to isolate and protect their people. Credit: VOXEU
This was proven to be useful when on the last day of December in 2019, the AI system alerted one of their employees of the company to a potential pneumonia-like outbreak in the Hubei province in China. Later, it was named COVID-19. The early alertness of the machine has prevented and saved millions of lives and thousands of causalities.
Another prime example of artificial intelligence being a good help in the fight against the coronavirus is using these machines to detect early signs of the coronavirus. That is what researchers at King’s College London, Massachusetts General Hospital, and ZOE, a UK-based health science company have accomplished. They have created an AI-based app that can predict whether someone has the coronavirus based on their symptoms. How this works is that the model would predict based on sex, age and key symptoms like loss of smell, fever and a persistent cough. The AI tool together with the widespread use of the app could help detect the ones who are carrying the virus and isolate them early and efficiently.
As time and the knowledge of the technology increases, it becomes as clear as day that AI will have a significant impact on the ending of epidemic, whether the leaders want it or not. These powerful human-made AI tools are not meant to replace healthcare professionals but help give them the information and data analysis needed to tackle the deadly COVID-19.
We, the future generations, must be able to see the great potential of AI technology to embellish not only our response to this pandemic, but also the future of healthcare in general.
Thumbail source: Radbound