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CORD-19 Initiative, AI, Data Science and Chatbots to Combat COVID-19

RightEye demonstrates their low-cost health diagnostic system using the eyes as the portal.
An example of AI/ML to detect disease and learning issues through eye-movement patterns

On March 16th, researchers from the Allen Institute for AI, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Microsoft, and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) of scholarly literature about COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, and the Coronavirus group.

Requested by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the dataset represents the most extensive machine-readable Coronavirus literature collection available for data and text mining to date, with over 29,000 articles, more than 13,000 of which have full text.

The initiative, building on AI2’s Semantic Scholar project, uses natural language processing to analyze coronavirus scientific articles, including the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The goal is to help researchers better analyze and understand the coronavirus so that they might eventually find a cure.

With that objective in mind, the White House issued a call to action to artificial intelligence experts to develop new text and data mining techniques that can help the science community answer high-priority scientific questions related to COVID-19.

“It’s really all-hands-on-deck on this,” said Eric Horvitz, Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, explaining the company’s motivation for participating. “People from our senior leadership on down to all of our folks deeply care about this issue. It’s an important issue for humankind worldwide,” he added.

In a global pandemic such as COVID-19, advanced technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and data science have become critical to helping societies effectively deal with the outbreak.

Bernard Marr of Forbes compiled a list of how those technologies are being used to manage and fight COVID-19:

  1. AI to identify, track and forecast outbreaks
  2. AI to help diagnose the virus
  3. Blockchain platform to process healthcare claims
  4. Drones to deliver medical supplies
  5. Robots sterilize, deliver food and supplies and perform other tasks
  6. AI algorithms to develop drugs
  7. Advanced fabrics for masks
  8. AI to identify non-compliance or infected individuals
  9. Chatbots to share health information
  10. Supercomputers working on a coronavirus vaccine

Beerud Sheth, CEO Gupshup believes that AI and chatbots will play a prominent role in providing insights and disseminating information related to COVID-19.  He wrote in an emailed document:

When it comes to Coronavirus updates, there is a wide gap between the high-level information published by government agencies and specific, actionable information that individuals need. This gap is the ideal breeding ground for misinformation, disinformation and ultimately widespread confusion.

Beerud says that AI can figure out transmission paths to identify how the virus is spreading, as well as define behaviors and best practices to stall or lessen transmission. Chatbots can instantaneously communicate these new finds to researchers through any device of your choosing. In the future, chatbots could be instrumental in guiding researchers through every step of the scientific process from disease discovery to cure.

In conclusion, Beerud wrote:

Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence are the path forward for reliable information distribution because they remove needless stress on humans who can focus their efforts on search and rescue, food/resource deployment, or whatever the circumstances may be.

As the experts and policymakers around the world shift their focus towards containing COVID-19, the role of surveillance, drug discovery and diagnosis have become crucial.  We hope that AI, data science and related advanced technologies will be used to save lives and help end this pandemic.

References:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/call-action-tech-community-new-machine-readable-covid-19-dataset/

https://pages.semanticscholar.org/coronavirus-research

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/03/13/coronavirus-how-artificial-intelligence-data-science-and-technology-is-used-to-fight-the-pandemic/#3cc625305f5f

Author Alan Weissberger

View all posts by Alan Weissberger | Website

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6 responses to “CORD-19 Initiative, AI, Data Science and Chatbots to Combat COVID-19”

  1. Alan Weissberger Avatar
    Alan Weissberger

    Example of big data analytics being used to combat COVID-19:

    SK Telecom announced that it will provide Geovision, a big data-based real-time floating population analysis service, to Gyeongbuk Provincial Police Agency, free of charge, until the Korean government declares the end of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The collaboration between SK Telecom and the police agency comes as a result of their joint efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus. SK Telecom has been providing Geovision since March 9, 2020 to Gyeongsan Police Station within the Gyeongbuk Province and will begin providing the service to all police stations in the Gyeongbuk Province today. Moreover, the company is currently in discussions with the Korean National Police Agency to expand the use of Geovision to all police stations across the nation.

    Geovision is a powerful big data and spatial data analysis service. By analyzing communication data generated between mobile phones and base stations on a real time basis, it offers accurate location-based services and is thus being widely used in areas including trade area analysis and demographic statistics.

    Reply
    1. Ken Pyle Avatar
      Ken Pyle

      And China and Israel have been using cell phone data to track users to detect and prevent people who are infected from leaving their quarantine and or letting people know their risk-level based on their travel patterns. There are rumors that there are discussions to do something similar in the U.S. Of course there are concerns that once this level of surveillance is implemented it cannot be clawed back, leading to an Orwellian-like power of the state.

      https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-israel-south-korea-and-china-look-at-intrusive-surveillance-solutions-for-tracking-covid-19/

      Reply
  2. Ken Pyle Avatar
    Ken Pyle

    Thanks for writing the article, Alan.

    I signed up for the Folding@Home initiative, which has been using distributed compute power from ordinary people’s computers to create a networked supercomputer. They are redirecting their energy towards COVID-19.

    https://foldingathome.org/covid19/

    The idea of using machine learning to detect different diseases and ailments has been a theme of several prosumer products Viodi has had a chance to cover the past few years.

    Righteye, which is reference above, uses eye movements along with other data to create signatures making it possible to diagnose everything from early age learning disabilities to concussions to elderly brain health issues.

    https://www.viodi.tv/2018/11/12/the-eye-as-a-window-into-health-and-well-being-ces2018/

    FoodMarble is another favorite, as that measures the chemical composition of one’s breath to determiine gastronomical issues.

    https://www.viodi.tv/2018/12/21/the-pocket-digestive-analyzer-ces2018/

    Common elements to both of those solutions are the low-cost detectors that largely rely on off-the-shelf hardware, generally skilled clinicians (as opposed to specialists), and a telecommunications link to a cloud-based, AI/ML learning systems.

    Perhaps the upshot of the COV)D-19 pandemic will be the spread of more of these telehealth/telemedicine approaches.

    Reply
  3. Alan Weissberger Avatar
    Alan Weissberger

    How AI might help find a cure for COVID-19:

    Finding a cure for a disease is a mind-numbingly lengthy procedure. Besides it also dents the financial resources.

    In the case of AI, it can

    • Develop antibodies and vaccines.

    • Check through pharmaceutical history for an existing drug.

    • Design drugs to combat the current strain or future epidemics.

    However, on a silver lining, Google’s Deep Mind’s AlphaFold System released structure predictions of several proteins associated with the virus. This is believed to guide scientific minds in understanding the virus.

    DeepMind’s researchers wrote on the AI lab’s website. “We confirmed that our system provided an accurate prediction for the experimentally determined SARS-CoV-2 spike protein structure shared in the Protein Data Bank, and this gave us confidence that our model predictions on other proteins may be useful.”

    In another part of the world, British startup Exscienta became the first company to put an AI-designed drug molecule to human trials earlier this year.

    https://www.analyticsinsight.net/ai-versus-covid-19-a-soldier-we-did-not-know-we-need/
    ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
    Separately, a new ITU inititative: Global Resiliency Platform to keep information networks ‘safer, stronger’ throughout COVID-19 pandemic https://techblog.comsoc.org/2020/03/24/itu-global-resiliency-platform-new-global-platform-to-keep-information-networks-safer-stronger-throughout-covid-19-pandemic/

    Reply
  4. Alan Weissberger Avatar
    Alan Weissberger

    NY Times: A.I. Versus the Coronavirus

    A new consortium of top scientists will be able to use some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers to look for solutions. Known as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, the new research consortium includes commitments from Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, as well as C3.ai and Microsoft. It seeks to put top scientists onto gargantuan social problems with the help of A.I. — its first challenge being the pandemic.

    The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogen’s spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the disease’s evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/science/ai-versus-the-coronavirus.html

    Reply
  5. Alan J Weissberger Avatar
    Alan J Weissberger

    April 20th UPDATE:

    The World Health Organization (WHO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with support from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)?, are set to work with telecommunication companies to text people directly on their mobile phones with vital health messaging to help protect them from COVID-19. These text messages will reach billions of people that aren’t able to connect to the internet for information.

    Now more than ever, technology must ensure that everyone can access the information they need. The collaboration will start in the Asia Pacific region and then roll out globally. The goal is to reach everyone with vital health messages, whatever their connectivity level. An estimated 3.6 billion people remain offline, with most people who are unconnected living in low-income countries, where an average of just two out of every ten people are online.

    ITU and WHO call on all telecommunication companies worldwide to join this initiative to help unleash the power of communication technology to save lives from COVID-19. This initiative builds on current efforts to disseminate health messages through the joint WHO-ITU BeHe@lthy BeMobile initiative.

    Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the first pandemic in human history where technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, productive and connected while being physically apart.

    Health workers are utilizing telemedicine to diagnose patients and hospitals rely on being connected to coordinate and triage them. Resilient and trustworthy telecommunication networks and services are essential, as more countries, companies and individuals turn to digital technologies to respond to and cope with the impact of COVID-19.

    Building on their longstanding collaboration, ITU and WHO are committed to identifying and scaling best evidence-based digital health solutions and to leveraging frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data to diagnose, contain and predict outbreaks better and faster. ?????
    ?

    https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/STMNT02-2020-who-itu-joint-statement-covid-19-be-healthy-be-mobile.aspx

    Reply

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