How Artificial Intelligence, Smartphones and Big Data is used to fight COVID-19

A digital response to the novel coronavirus pandemic has brought significant value. Artificial intelligence, smartphones and Big Data helped countries like South Korea, Taiwan and China to fight COVID-19.

Hyderabad: South Korea, Taiwan and China have succeeded in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic using Artificial intelligence, smartphones and Big Data. The rest of the world has so much to learn from these countries.

Though South Korea recorded the second-highest number of cases, the death toll was quite low. Taiwan, which is neighbouring China, has recorded an even lesser death toll. The government of South Korea is using Big Data to collect information on the number of patients, the areas in which they resided, their gender and age, the number of deaths. Victims are given a unique identification number. Their details remain confidential.

Here's an example of South Korea’s Corona bulletin: Patient 102 and her friend watched a movie in K1 and K2 seats in a particular theatre. They reached the theatre in so and so taxi. Patient 151 dined in a so and so restaurant. Patient 587 took the local train to a party, where he met 20 people.

There is a website in place which informs the citizens about the itinerary of the infected. This site is run with the information provided by the local government. This information helps citizens to avoid going to infected places. The government has created several apps with the help of GPS, call data, and linked them with Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. These apps help in identifying the movement of patients. Instead of getting alarmed, people are identifying which areas to avoid. They understood the importance of social distancing. The information on this government website is helping the healthcare workers to spring into action.

Shortly after the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, Taiwan set up a National Health Command Center. The government has imposed restrictions on inbound and outbound travellers; identified the infected using Big Data. It curbed the fake news being spread on social media. A database was created by combining the information like national health insurance policies, migrations, customs, hospital visits, QR codes of flight tickets.

People were alerted from time to time using AI algorithms. This made it easier for healthcare workers to track the travel history of patients. With the help of Big Data, the authorities were able to send the health status of individuals to border security guards. These health status messages served as passes. In areas where nCoV infections were highly prevalent, symptomatic patients were tracked and quarantined using mobile phone tracking.

The National Health Command Center has increased the supply of masks and monitored their pricing. It provided a map of pharmacies that had a stock of face masks. In China, the movement of corona infected patients were constantly monitored with the help of mobile tracking. This was an important step in combating the further spread of the novel coronavirus.

The Chinese government used AI algorithms. With the help of the country’s largest telecom operator China Mobile’s database, the government tracked the movement of its citizens.

Several startups along with bigwigs like Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei are jointly fighting the virus. The doctors, hospitals, researchers and public administration are working in coordination. Alibaba has developed a diagnostic system that tracks the coronavirus in seconds using AI. So far, it has detected the cases with 96 per cent accuracy. This novel system has come to the rescue of healthcare workers and hospitals.

BlueDot, a Canadian company was the first to warn about this coronavirus outbreak. Every day, this company’s AI bot sifts through millions of articles, news and blog posts published in 65 languages. It warned on December 31, 2019, that a deadly disease like SARS was about to break out in China’s Wuhan. This warning came nine days before the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a 'public health emergency'.

The BlueDot system had warned officials about an article in Mandarin that read 27 people suffered from severe pneumonia after visiting a wet market in Wuhan. BlueDot’s 40 employees include doctors, veterinarians, infectious disease specialists, data scientists and software developers. They analyze the articles published in 65 languages using the Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. They get alerts if they find any signs of disease outbreaks. It was BlueDot which warned the US about the Zika virus spread from Brazil in 2016. About 80 per cent of the transactions in China are cashless. They are done through apps like Ali Pay and WeChat. The Chinese officials are using this data to constantly monitor the movement of its citizens, and taking immediate action.

The Communist Party of China has been using facial recognition technology for surveillance. These facial recognition cameras are now equipped with thermal sensors to detect the individual’s body temperature. A company named SenseTime is providing the software to run this technology. Smart helmets equipped with thermal sensors were distributed in the Sichuan province.

Using state of the art equipment such as Big data and AI, the Chinese government has built a comprehensive health surveillance system called the Health Code. This helps the government track the patients’ travel history, contact period with the infected. Ali Pay and WeChat apps are helping people to find out for themselves if they can venture out or remain in-home quarantine. Red, Yellow and Green codes were enabled in the apps. Citizens can check the colour-coding of their area and decide if they should continue the quarantine.

WeChat, developed by the Tencent group is providing the health bulletin to Chinese citizens. Using chatbots in travel and tourism, they are giving a real-time scenario of flights and trains. Supercomputers of Huawei, Tencent and DD have been instrumental in helping the researchers find a cure for COVID-19.

From Hong Kong to Israel to the US, AI and Machine Learning are being used to find a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. Even if these experiments are successful, it will take another year for the vaccine to go public. In the meantime, there is some good news from Israel. The Israeli Miguel Institute has been experimenting to find a cure for respiratory ailments in chicken. These scientists have based their experiments on a specific type of coronavirus, whose DNA closely resembles that of nCoV.

The Miguel Institute announced that they can release a vaccine within three months if their research is successful. The whole world is eagerly waiting for the vaccine. The Chinese hospitals have to take at least 1,000 CT scans per day to diagnose nCoV infection. Infor Vision company’s AI solutions are helping deliver faster results of these scans. Alibaba group’s Anti Financials is utilizing Blockchain Technology for faster health insurance payments.

With all these measures, the face time and contact between hospital staff and patients were significantly reduced. Since the virus does not infect the robots, they were used to disinfect the buildings and public places.

China-based Pudu Technology has manufactured these robots, which were used to supply food and medicines to the patients. The drones manufactured by Terra Company were used to deliver test results and quarantine equipment. They are continuously surveilling public places to avoid gatherings and contagion.