Artificial intelligence can help people overcome outbreak

Debojit Acharjee

(The writer is a software engineer. He can be reached at debojitacharjee@gmaiil.com)

The outbreak of Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCov) in China became a global emergency of 2020, and various preventive measures were taken to control the infection. The outbreak first started at the Wuhan city of China and spread across the country. In China, doctors tried their best to cure the patients but most of the medications had failed, and the death toll increased dramatically. The outbreak was such an emergency that a new hospital named Huoshenshan Hospital was built within 10 days at Wuhan. Controlling such a deadly outbreak is very challenging work, but the people of China took various comprehensive measures with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to control the outbreak.

Online medical assistance:

In China, cloud-based online consultation websites and apps helped the people to deal with the outbreak. Doing online consultation from home, instead of going to the hospital – helped to control the transmission of the virus in public places and hospitals. Such cloud-based online consultation services with AI algorithms can identify seriously ill patients and manage patients intelligently. Many hospitals in China offer online medical consultation and video chat facility with doctors for any medical problem. During the outbreak, infected patients were able to consult the doctors directly from their homes. Many people took advice from doctors using various websites and apps. Many apps like Jingdong (‹ž?) and Wei Yi (”÷ˆã), provides online medical consultation service to the patients in China and they work through cloud-based AI system. Five hospitals in east China’s Anhui Province started offering Internet-based diagnosis and treatment to the patients with fever, on their official WeChat accounts on 24th January 2020. Hospital of Anhui Medical University had treated more than 600 patients online and many other hospitals also did the same. Using such AI-based online medical consultation services had helped many ill patients to get medical support from home, and also made it possible to control the outbreak of this disease in China up to a greater extent.

Medical service robots:

Apart from online medical services, hospitals in China at Guangdong Province used service robots to deliver medicines and communicate with infected patients. Using robots instead of human, to communicate with an infected patient – reduces the chance of cross-contamination and transmission of disease to others. Moreover, nurses and doctors have a chance of getting an infection from the infected patients and there is a risk of losing their lives also. So, using such service robots can keep everyone in a hospital on the safer side, and these types of service robots were made of non-corrosive material – which can be cleaned with disinfectants for sanitization. Companies like Orion Star had supplied many such service robots to various hospitals in China to deal with Novel Coronavirus (2019-ncov) outbreak. Such kind of service robots are programmed with AI algorithms and can work almost like a human. So, using such service robots can help the healthcare personnel to deal with infected patients safely, during any such deadly outbreak.

Thermal scanning system:

In China, people were screened using sophisticated temperature detection devices and thermal vision cameras – connected to the AI systems, to detect infected people with fever in various public places and airports. This type of intelligent screening system was able to control the outbreak of coronavirus infection, efficiently. That’s why I think using such AI-driven fever detection system, can not only help to control the outbreak of any infection, by preventing seriously sick people from travelling through flights or public transport, but also can alert the paramedics about them.

Outbreak prediction using AI:

Apart from using robots, supercomputers running on AI algorithms can help prevent outbreaks like the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) of China. Blue Dot – an automated infectious disease surveillance computer system – created by a Canadian artificial intelligence company, was able to predict the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak at the Wuhan city, long before it happened. BlueDot sent early warnings about the outbreak to its customers before it happened, and it had also predicted the spread of the virus in other places like Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo in the days following its initial appearance. BlueDot uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques to prepare its model that subsequently sifts through news reports in 65 languages, airline ticketing data, and animal disease networks. With the help of the AI algorithm, it then makes a meaningful prediction about any infectious outbreak. So, using such AI-powered infectious disease surveillance supercomputer will able to predict any outbreaks like the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), and can help in preventing any pandemic before happening.

Self-driven cars/ autonomous vehicle (AV):

During the outbreak of Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan city, many people tried returning to their native places, mainly through flights. That’s why many people were rushing to airports using taxis and public transport vehicles. But many taxi drivers refused to provide service and couldn’t drive the passengers to airports – because of the fear of getting an infection. However, if self-driven taxis were used in cities, then everyone could get the taxi service during any such outbreak. A self-driven car, also known as an autonomous vehicle (AV), uses artificial intelligence algorithms to navigate and drive from one place to another. A company called Waymo, initially led by Google, for the development of self-driven cars –successfully tested its self-driven cars and planning to manufacture Waymo Level 4 autonomous vehicles, very soon. Uber is also interested in providing self-driven taxi service and might use such self-driven cars as taxis, in the near future. So, I think such self-driven vehicles with AI will be very useful to the public during an outbreak.

Delivery drones:

When we think of drones, the first thing comes to our mind is high-altitude video recording/streaming. This is because that’s what most people are doing with the help of drones to capture stunning videos for their Vlog. But drones can do more than that, and in many places, drones were used to deliver food and pharmaceutical products also. A company called Flirtey uses drones to deliver water bottles, food and medicines to rural areas of the United States. Flirtey is the first delivery drone company in the world approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide delivery service using drones. Another company called Zipline International uses drones to deliver pharmaceutical products to various parts of Rwanda in Central Africa. Amazon – the e-commerce/tech giant, is also planning to use delivery drones for the delivery of its online orders, and the service will be called as Amazon Prime Air. Such delivery drones use GPS navigation and AI algorithms to fly from one location to another. During the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCov) outbreak in China, people faced a lot of problems while collecting food and medicines, because many stores remained closed. However, using such drones to deliver food and medicines during an outbreak can help people to survive.

During the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus infection (2019-nCoV), the products and services with AI were able to help the people of China, successfully. Therefore, I believe that improving the infrastructure by implementing various products and services with AI can help improve our life in a better way, and AI can also be useful in controlling or preventing any such outbreaks, rigorously.