Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are emerging as essential tools in prediction, detection, prevention, and vaccine development. While researchers try to figure out what impact AI will eventually have in addressing this pandemic, there are several areas where AI is starting to show promising results.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tools are being developed and deployed to help researchers and scientists find information more quickly and efficiently than could be used for developing innovative solutions. This includes mining Covid-19 literature available online from studies that are being conducted by scientists all around the world and analyzing the results from these studies. Scientists could use this information to improve their research.
- AI-based systems are being developed to detect Covid-19 outbreaks in different regions worldwide. Technology is used to scan news articles, posts on social media, and search queries made by people – to detect potential outbreaks. Once detected, this information could be used to alert authorities and government agencies to ramp up testing, prepare healthcare facilities and warn the public.
- AI and Machine Learning are being deployed for clinical research. Companies are using technology to evaluate whether some existing drugs can be used to treat Covid-19. Insights from existing data from different trials are being used to speed up the development of new drugs. Machine learning is used to analyze patient images (for example X-Rays) for early disease detection so that healthcare professionals can develop appropriate treatment plans for their patients.
- AI algorithms are being developed to diagnose suspected cases quickly and accurately. This can help the front-line workers scale their testing capacity, especially in regions with large populations.
- One of the very important applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has been the development of location-based messaging technology that provides direct alerts to the general population. This has helped reduce the transmission rates amongst the public where this technology was deployed.
- Finally, technology is being used to analyze how the lockdowns impact communities worldwide – regarding health care and economics. This research could be used to implement immediate and long-term policies that are effective for individual regions.
It is early to predict, finally, what role Artificial Intelligence will play in tackling Covid-19, but some of its applications and promising results are showing that it is helping frontline workers, the healthcare community, researchers, scientists, and government agencies in fighting this pandemic.