Corona Virus And Artificial Intelligence
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported coronavirus in Wuhan, China on January 9 and 6, respectively. But their warning was late. A few days later they were overtaken by a medical platform from Canada using artificial intelligence called BlueDot.
BlueDot sent out a virus outbreak alert to its customers on December 31, 2019. Artificial Intelligence uses an algorithm that scans reports in 65 languages, follows official statements, or analyzes various reports from the animal and plant diseases world. Based on the data collected, he then warns his clients about dangerous zones, such as the latest in Wuhan.
WHO and the CDC must rely on information from national health authorities, and China, as we know, is not a very reliable partner in sharing information about diseases, air pollution or various natural disasters, writes US technology magazine Wires.
Artificial intelligence drawing on multiple sources has a chance to get information faster. "We know that we cannot rely entirely on governments to provide timely information. We can gather reports of possible outbreaks, narrow-minded whispers or forums and blogs where there are signs that something unusual is happening," explains founder and BlueDot CEO Kamran Khan.
Because of the chaos of information, BlueDot does not take into account social media messages. However, the platform has access to global airline data, which can help predict when and where infected people are and what their next travel steps will be. BlueDot correctly predicted that coronavirus would move from Wuhan to Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo in the coming days.
Khan led to the establishment of the artificial intelligence SARS epidemic of 2003. At that time he worked in a hospital in Toronto as a specialist in infectious diseases. It was in this city that 44 people eventually succumbed to the virus. He said then that he didn't want to experience anything like that anymore. Following a series of testing of various predictive programs, he launched the BlueDot platform in 2014. Today, it has 40 employees - doctors and programmers - working with the disease monitoring program.
Once artificial intelligence has completed some analysis, epidemiologists will validate its findings and, if scientifically meaningful, send them to public health officials in dozens of countries, including the US and Canada, airlines and hospitals where infected patients could end up. The general public does not have access to the data, but Khan revealed that he is working on it.
BlueDot already has successful predictions in addition to the current coronavirus. For example, in 2016, it correctly identified the outbreak of the zika virus in southern Florida.
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