The dangerous coronavirus outbreak which almost paralyzed the whole of China and caused an alarming situation in other Asian countries has already killed 56 people, while the number of infected persons was 1,975. The National Health Commission of China mentioned that 15 deaths and 688 new cases were reported on Saturday, January 25.
During such a vulnerable situation, early warnings can provide better chances to battle against the alarming stage. But when the government avoid the alerts, the process of combat becomes difficult. That is what happened in 2002 and 2003 when the Chinese government faced backlash for covering up SARS epidemic that killed more than 740 lives all around the world. But after the emergence of coronavirus, China looks more transparent so far.
But while the technology has evolved over the years, it possible that by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) combating such disease would be easier which would provide better information about the disease before it becomes an epidemic.
Technology helped to detect virus outbreak
On January 9, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported about a flu-like outbreak in China's Wuhan. But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention heard about the disease on January 6, while Canadian health monitoring platform alerted about the outbreak to the customers on December 31.
A Toronto-based startup Bluedot, whose AI-driven health monitoring platform analyzes billions of data points, was the first to send alerts to its clients about the outbreak on December 31. As per the technology company, they have used "Big data analytics to track and anticipate the spread of the world's most dangerous infectious diseases."
The AI technology
It should be mentioned that as described by Wired the platform, which detected the virus outbreak several days before WHO and US CDC's report, uses an AI-driven algorithm that shifts through foreign-language news reports, airline data and reports of animal disease outbreaks and after checked by epidemiologists alerts are send to the clients in advance to avoid danger zones like Wuhan.
The company stated that they track down move information faster than the disease attack people. The AI platform was accurate about its prediction on the outbreak location of coronavirus outside mainland China.
As reported by Canadian Press, the Bluedot founder Kamran Khan stated that while the world is rapidly changing and dangerous diseases are emerging and spreading faster, "We happen to have growing access to data we can use...to generate insights and spread them faster than the diseases spread themselves."
