How Data Science is Helping Contain the Pandemic
Here is how the Coronavirus Response Is Aided by Data Science
Since the rapid outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, the virus has swept to more than a hundred countries. Social distancing and lockdown orders have helped contain the spread of the virus but there are no quick fixes and vaccines are expected to take several months if not years to be invented.
Tech Giants around the globe are continuously collaborating with medicos, data scientists and government to leverage the strength of artificial intelligence and machine learning to uncover a way to help fight the pandemic. In this article we will be discussing about the various ways machine learning and related subjects can help fight the pandemic.
Note from the Author: I am not a health professionals or epidemiologists, and the opinions of this article should not be interpreted as professional advice. To learn more about the coronavirus pandemic, you can click here.
Coronaviruses are a group of related RNA viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. The corona virus pandemic outbreak was first reported in China and since then the virus has affected more than 5.8M people worldwide and have taken 360K lives. Common symptoms of the disease in humans include fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, and in some cases loss of sense of smell.
Complications generally include pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. The virus is found to spread between humans during close contact, most often via small droplets produced during coughing, sneezing, and talking. The WHO (World Health Organization) recognized the spread of COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. Strategies in the control of an outbreak are containment or suppression, and mitigation.
However researchers are trying to apply artificial intelligence to help fight the pandemic. In this article will be discussing about some of the ways in which AI is being used to fight the outbreak.
Identifying and Forecasting Outbreak
One of the most essential thing required to tackle a pandemic is the availability of information and the ability to identify and predict an outbreak. One of the biggest advantage of a machine is that it can process huge amount of data collected from different sources in very less time. By analyzing news reports, government documents and data from other informative sources, machines can be trained to track and forecast an outbreak.
CORD-19 is one such open dataset available with over 134,000 scholarly articles, including over 60,000 with full text about COVID-19 and related coronaviruses. This resource is freely available to the global research community to apply recent advances in NLP and related AI techniques to generate new insights in support of the ongoing fight against the disease.
Diagnosing the Virus
Researchers at King’s College London, Massachusetts General Hospital and health science company ZOE have developed an AI diagnostic model that can predict whether someone is likely to be infected with COVID-19 based on their symptoms. The AI model uses data from an app to predict COVID-19 infection, by comparing the user’s symptoms and the results of traditional COVID tests. According to researchers this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited.
Use of Intelligent Drones
In this war against this invisible enemy, drones play a key role by helping authorities in different ways to contain the spread of the outbreak. Drones are being extensively used for surveillance and broadcast. They are being used to monitor people’s movement.
In addition to street surveillance, authorities are also using drones to broadcast messages and information about lockdown measures. Apart from this, they are also being used to deliver medicines and groceries.
Develop Drugs
Machine learning algorithms can analyze massive amounts of variables and generate trillions of compounds to ultimately discover the most potent vaccine. Recently, Google DeepMind released protein structure predictions of several under-studied proteins associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, to help the research community better understand the virus. Using this visualization, it becomes easier to spot patterns in data and make prediction thus helping develop drugs that could help prevent the disease.
Robots Deliver Food and Perform Other Tasks
The COVID-19 outbreak has speed up the use of robots to replace human workers. Lazarettos have seen a huge spike in the use of robots for diagnosing the patients. They are also used by the hospital staff to interact in real time.
Outside of hospitals they are being used by public works and public safety departments to spray disinfectant through infected regions. Even the companies developing robots for services such as cleaning and sanitization have seen a soar in demand.
Chatbots to Share Verified Information
A series of apps and bots have lately emerged to tackle a surge in demand for information about the coronavirus. Recently, Facebook has launched a chatbot in its messenger to help provide verified information to users. Even the Indian government launched a WhatsApp chatbot called the MyGov Corona Helpdesk that help users with verified information.
Using Supercomputers to Fight the Pandemic
Supercomputers are powerful machines that are used to perform complex analysis and process huge amount of data. Companies are using the immense power of super computers to analyze vast number of potential compounds. These machines could help by identifying parts of a protein that stimulate immunity which could be used to develop a vaccine.
This article is inspired from the Forbes Blog (Coronavirus: How Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and technology is used to fight the pandemic) and I would recommend you to check that blog too.
With that we have reached the end of this article. Before wrapping up I would like to extend my gratitude and respect to all the doctors and all the frontlines for their selfless service during these hard times. Stay Safe!
