A recent study published at European
Parliament shows a comprehensive list of artificial intelligence (AI) examples
on how to leverage this technology to fight coronavirus. The international
community is currently focused on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak,
first identified in Wuhan, China. Due to this pandemic reality, international
organizations and scientists are using AI to track it real-time, to effectively
predict where the virus might appear next, and develop an effective response.
Since December 31, 2019, when the World
Health Organization (WHO) received the first report of a suspected novel
coronavirus in Wuhan, the world has changed dramatically. Some reports had
suggested that a Canadian epidemiologist had raised the first warnings of the
outbreak, using an algorithm called BlueDot that scanned news reports and
airline ticketing to predict the spread of the disease.
Research suggests that AI beat humans to the punch in warning the world about the coronavirus. But it did not get all the credit, because it needed humans to recognize the danger.
So, the first warning outside China of the
virus came from the automated HealthMap system at Boston Children’s Hospital,
which scans online news and social media reports for signals of spreading
disease. At 11:12 PM local time on December 30, 2019, it sent an alert about
unidentified pneumonia cases in Wuhan, but only ranked its seriousness as a
three out of five. It was days before human researchers at HealthMap recognized
the dangers of the outbreak.
The AI systems can scan data from online
news, social media, and government reports for early signals of an outbreak,
and then notify human experts from agencies such as the World Health
Organization, who can make more detailed investigations.
The study from the European Parliamentary
Research Service signifies that AI has been used mostly to help detect whether
people have novel coronavirus through the detection of visual signs of COVID-19
on images from lung CT scans; to monitor, in real time, changes in body
temperature through the use of wearable sensors; and to provide an open-source
data platform to track the spread of the disease.
Additionally, AI could process vast amounts
of unstructured text data to predict the number of potential new cases by area
and which types of populations will be most at risk, as well as evaluate and
optimize strategies for controlling the spread of the epidemic. Other AI
applications can deliver medical supplies by drone, disinfect patient rooms, and
scan approved drug databases (for other illnesses) that might also work against
COVID-19. AI technologies have been harnessed to come up with new molecules
that could serve as potential medications or even accelerate the time taken to
predict the virus's RNA secondary structure.
Certain AI applications can also detect fake
news about the disease by applying machine-learning techniques for mining
social media information, tracking down words that are sensational or alarming,
and identifying which online sources are deemed authoritative for fighting what
has been called an infodemic.
Furthermore, AI can help in public health
emergency response management, derogating from an individual's rights of
privacy, non-discrimination, and freedom of movement, while AI applications can
be used for facial recognition to track people not wearing masks in public, on
AI-based fever detection systems, as well as the processing of data collected
on digital platforms and mobile networks to track a person's recent movements.
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