Artificial Intelligence in The Time of Covid-19 Pandemic; How Machine Learning Algorithms Have Helped the Global Community to Help Combat the Virus.

The world we live in today is governed by the unwritten law of social distancing. The global industries, particularly the healthcare sector, is utilizing the best of the resources at their disposal to tackle the problem of containing the disease. When we are compelled to reimagine the world as we know it now, what might help us to succeed in embracing the ‘new normal’?  Has the human intelligence already succeeded in the creation of something advance to scrape through the difficult times? Maybe an answer lies in Artificial Intelligence. 

The healthcare workers have their schedules crammed with a soaring number of coronavirus patients each day. To relieve many of the tremendously challenging tasks related to patient care, AI has already assisted healthcare workers and researchers in understanding how COVID-19 spreads and speeding up research and treatment. Many countries around the world have already grasped the notion that technology could be an ally at a time when social proximity is contagious.

To combat the virus, one instance where the true potential of machine learning reflects is when AI-powered early warning systems were used to provide precautionary warnings to the public. By analyzing mainstream news and online content of multiple languages, AI has the potential to device epidemiological patterns and ease the process of syndromic surveillance. The essence of syndromic surveillance is an out of the box approach where health officials can derive information on early detection of an outbreak with the assistance of automated data acquisition.  

A Canadian startup that detected the spread of the virus, days before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization, BlueDot is a fine example of how the combination of human and machine intelligence can perform wonders. It tracked the risks of infectious diseases by using AI and promptly warned private and government bodies about a cluster of an ‘unusual pneumonia’ springing up in the city of Wuhan, China.

Even though AI is not the silver bullet to miraculously make the virus disappear from the world it could be an ideal ally to effectively combat the disease with minimum human intervention.  It comes as no surprise that the frontline workers are taxed with overloaded work of patient care. Taking that into consideration several leading tech companies have provided the facility of disease diagnosis; the basic rule of thumb to contain the disease. Machine learning clears the way for researches to recognize patterns in images to indicate the probability of the disease and diagnose it earlier.  

With the rapid spread of the epidemic, another outbreak that plagued our community is known as the infodemic. It spreads misinformation and rumors during a health emergency making it a daunting task to see through what the real solution is. Thanks to machine learning algorithms that have been embodied in social media platforms, it has cleared the way to filter any misleading information or spam messages.

AI is beneficial for policymakers, healthcare professionals, and society at large to help manage the spread of the disease. The application of advanced technological systems into facing unprecedented challenges in healthcare, particularly AI in the time of Coronavirus is a clear example of how human and machine intelligence work hand in hand. If the researchers and professionals are given the necessary access to computing capacity to help defeat the common enemy, we might be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.