Can Artificial Intelligence(AI) be the solution to combat COVID-19

The sudden appearance and rapid spread of COVID-19 across the globe, has made organizations apply their artificial intelligence(AI) & machine learning know-how in the fight to curb this pandemic & took governments and society to turbo-charge their R&D efforts to find better ways to hunt down promising treatments for emerging diseases.

Hyderabad: Artificial intelligence(AI) has the power to accelerate the process by reasoning across all available biomedical data and information in a systematic search for existing approved medicines – a vital step in helping patients while the world waits for a vaccine.

As per the world economic forum, AI has been a powerful tool in the search for COVID-19 treatments. In January, Benevolent AI identified a drug for rheumatoid arthritis which has the potential therapy for the novel Coronavirus. This AI models and algorithms can save time and money in the search for potential drug leads for emerging diseases.

Can Artificial Intelligence be the solution to combat COVID-19

If we look at the national scenario, the government of India has developed a contact-based app to trace COVID-19 patients called Aarogya Setu app. In June, India told the UN that drones and contact tracing apps have helped India in managing COVID-19 cases. The app employs Bluetooth & location data to let the user know of any suspected COVID-19 patients nearby. This app is developed in 12 languages and has a user database of more than 10 million people. Other mobile applications such as "Go Corona Go" and c have also been developed for contact tracing by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and IIT's for COVID-19.

Brazil, which is hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, artificial intelligence comes to the aid of doctors to diagnose cases of COVID-19 infection and make up for the lack of mass screening.

The RadVid-19 system which is developed by Huawei and Siemens has helped doctors decide the right course of treatment for their patients.

RadVid-19 uses a tool, which has been in operation since April and determines the likelihood of COVID-19 contamination. It combines two algorithms that analyze X-rays and chest CT scans for abnormalities in the lungs to find the spots on patients' lungs that are likely markers of infection by the new coronavirus. The software identifies those areas and estimates the probability of a case of COVID-19 and this program shows doctors on a computer screen how their patients' lungs are changing over time and enables them to analyze the white and yellow circles marking potential infection.

Infervision has launched a Coronavirus AI solution that helps front-line healthcare workers detect and monitor the disease efficiently and helps imaging departments in healthcare facilities are being taxed with the increased workload created by the virus and also improves CT diagnosis speed.

One of the safest and fastest ways to get medical supplies where they need to go during a disease outbreak is with drone delivery, where aerial vehicles can transport medical samples and quarantine material with minimal risk. Even it was used to patrol public spaces, track non-compliance to quarantine mandates, and for thermal imaging.

Robots aren't susceptible to the virus, so they are being deployed to complete many tasks such as cleaning and sterilizing and delivering food and medicine to reduce the amount of human-to-human contact during COVID-19.

In April, Apple and Google, the two big tech giants, colluded to develop a contact-based app to trace COVID-19 patients. As the app works on Bluetooth and has been mostly used in western countries.

During the progression of the coronavirus, AI has facilitated manual repurposing of drugs to treat COVID-19. Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) has developed an AI model that can repurpose medicines according to the highest success probability against the disease, instead of going through the entire process manually.

COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for the world and seems this outbreak may be part of an increasingly frequent pattern of epidemics, fuelled by our hyper-connected modern world.

Technology has helped create a world in which pathogens like COVID-19, SARS, and Zika, etc. But the technology, in the form of AI, can also provide us with the weapons to fight back.