Pull to refresh

How Can AI & Data Science Help to Fight the Coronavirus?

Reading time 4 min
Views 1.4K
image

Do you know AI can save us from a worldwide pandemic?

Yeah, it's true. Our global researchers have touted these two buzzing technologies can provide a substantial social benefit to this worldwide health crisis.

Before I begin, I would like to take this moment to say THANK YOU to all our COVID-19 Warriors standing on the frontline and working day and night for us. We can’t thank them enough. Our healthcare staff, police, scientist, security guards, and sweepers. Their contribution is overwhelming and commendable ?

Discovering a drug for any medicine demands the joint efforts of the world's brightest minds. The process is notoriously long, complicated, and expensive. And that's how health experts are involved in searching COVID-19 medicine. In the midst of such a crisis, artificial intelligence solutions are offering a new hope that a cure might appear faster with it.

So, what is precisely the role of AI in fighting with COVID-19? What help does it provide to the health experts? Find out in this article.

According to Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered AI, the machine learning system employs a form of pattern recognition, and that's broadly used today. She even arranged an online conference to consider the use of AI in fighting with COVID-19.

Accelerating the search of new drugs, anticipating the areas where scarce medical supplies will need more, profoundly understanding the virus spread, predicting its effectiveness and more are the areas where deep-learning algorithms come into play.

Here, I will tell you about the latest technology trend that our health experts are using to fight with this pandemic. Let's get started.

image

1. Identify, Predict and Track Disease Outbreaks


BlueDot, a venture-backed startup created a sophisticated AI platform that processes billions of data pieces to identify these outbreaks. The data can include health reports, worldwide air travel network and more. This venture made its first alert about coronavirus on December 31st, 2019. It was much before then the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they came out with their own study on January 6th, 2020.

MIT researchers with a background in machine learning and life sciences are collaborating, sharing tools and datasets for developing new machine learning solutions that can combat the novel pandemic. They have developed a model that COVID-19 data in conjunction with a neural network that determines the efficacy of quarantine measures and predicts the spread better.

image

2. Aid in the Diagnosis of Virus


The Chinese tech giant, Alibaba, claimed that AI can detect Covid-19 in just 20 seconds! They have developed a new system that can detect coronavirus in CT scans of patients’ chests with the precision 96% against viral pneumonia cases. And surprisingly, it only takes 20 seconds to decide.

According to the report, humans generally take 15-20 minutes to do the same as there can be more than 300 images for evaluation. The model was trained on images, and data from 5,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. Well, it's already tested in many hospitals in China, and 100 healthcare facilities have employed it for their usage.

Alibaba also joined its forces with DingTalk to launch a series of AI technologies along with Cloud-based solutions to help the organizations across the world fight against deadly Covid-19. These new tech offerings are designed to help the doctors and researchers in addressing and overcoming the challenges across the different major areas associated with the virus. To seek help in this regard you can also hire ai developers in india as they are more cost-effective and updated with latest trends and technologies.

3. Process Healthcare Claims


During the widespread pandemic coronavirus, business and administrative operations are also taxed with the clinical services. Ant Financial's blockchain platform is helping in speeding up processing the claims by decreasing the number of face-to-face interactions between the doctor and patients.

4. Drones for Medical Supplies


Drones are the safest plus fastest methods for delivering medical supplies during a pandemic. Currently, Terra Drone is using its unmanned aerial vehicles for providing medical supplies with a bit of risk between Xinchang County's disease Control Centre and the People's Hospital.

5. Robots to Deliver Food Supplies and Perform Similar Tasks


It's very evident that robots are unsusceptible to the virus, that's why they are deployed to perform human tasks like sterilizing, cleaning, and delivering medical supplies to decrease human-to-human contact.

China's Pudu Technology has deployed robots for human assistance. Earlier, it was catering to more than 40 hospitals in the country.

6. Assistance in the Drug’s Development


Within a few weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, AI's predictive capabilities already started proposing that the existing drugs might be helpful in its cure. Google's DeepMind division is using its latest algorithms to study and learn proteins that make up the virus. They are publishing their research to aid the treatment.

Another organization ChemRxiv is also utilizing AI algorithms to identify progeny drugs similar to the parents, which are already even tested against COVID-19.

image

7. Everyday Wear for Precaution & Protection


A security staff of Hongyuan Park, China has created an AI-enabled glass that can detect the body temperature of visitors. These glasses work with the concept of non-contact thermal augmented reality. It has a camera inside and a cable, the regular-looking glass detects anyone suffering from a fever. It immediately sends alerts and makes digital records.

8. Chatbots to Share Information & Spread Awareness


AI-powered Chatbots are an essential means of communication for the people. They can access free online health consultation services, latest travel procedures updates and disruptions, and more.

This technology has become more accessible for all to leverage healthcare facilities. Here, it's worth saying that after the pandemic its adoption in broader healthcare applications will continue to grow.

Let’s Wrap Up!


image

While the countries are grappling with the COVID-19, healthcare experts are utilizing AI technology to come up with better solutions. And, that's what you read above. There is a lot more happening in industries where experts are coming up with new solutions every day. The top machine learning companies are partnering with each other to discover better solutions. If you are operating in healthcare business then you can opt to hire developer in India to get the better solutions to fight through pandemic at cost-effective prices.

All these complementary efforts and their endeavours are creating a much-needed hope in these uncertain times.
Tags:
Hubs:
+3
Comments 0
Comments Leave a comment

Articles