AI GEARS UP TO FIGHT VIRUS CONTAGION

            AI AGAINST VIRUS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

      AI is getting increasingly sophisticated at doing what humans do, but more efficiently, more quickly and at a lower cost. The potential for both AI and robotics in healthcare is vast. Just like in our every-day lives, AI and robotics are increasingly a part of our healthcare eco-system. It is considered to be one of the When many of us hear the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), we imagine robots doing our jobs, rendering people obsolete. And, since AI-driven computers are programmed to make decisions with little human intervention, some wonder if machines will soon make the difficult decisions we now entrust to our doctors. According to David B. Agus, MD, a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering, it's important to separate fact from science fiction, because AI is already here -- and it's fundamentally changing medicine. Rather than robotics, AI in health care mainly refers to doctors and hospitals accessing vast data sets of potentially life-saving information. This includes treatment methods and their outcomes, survival rates, and speed of care gathered across millions of patients, geographical locations, and innumerable and sometimes interconnected health conditions. New computing power can detect and analyze large and small trends from the data and even make predictions through machine learning that's designed to identify potential health outcomes.

AI IN HEALTHCARE

AI AGAINST CONTAGION

       Disease outbreaks like the corona virus often unfold too quickly for scientists to find a cure. But in the future, artificial intelligence could help researchers do a better job.While it’s probably too late for the f ledgling technology to play a role in the current epidemic, it can be useful in case of another outbreak. AI is good at combing through mounds of data to find connections that make it easier to determine what kinds of treatments could work or which experiments to pursue next.

                           

GENE SEQUENCING

 

       The question is what Big Data will come up with when it only gets little scraps of information on a new viral strain like Covid-19 (corona virus), which emerged in China and has affected more than 80,000 people in about two months. The fact that researchers managed to produce the gene sequencing of the new virus within weeks of the first reported cases is promising, since it shows there’s more immediate data available now when outbreaks happen.

 

FASTER CLINICAL TESTING

 

       Andrew Hopkins, chief executive of UK-based startup Exscientia Ltd, is among those working to help train AI for drug discovery. He figures new treatments could go from conception to clinical testing in as little as 18 to 24 months within the next decade, thanks to AI. Exscientia designed a new compound for treating an obsessive- compulsive disorder that’s ready to be tested in the lab after less than a year in the initial research phase.

 

ML FOR DRUG TESTING

 

      Cambridge-based Healx has a similar approach, but it uses machine learning (ML) to find new uses for existing drugs. Both companies feed their algorithms with information — gleaned from sources such as journals, biomedical databases and clinical trials — to suggest new treatments for diseases. The two companies each use a team of human researchers to work alongside the AI to help guide the process.

TRACKING VIRUS OUTBREAK USING AI

      BlueDot, an artificial intelligence platform that tracks infectious diseases around the world, flagged a cluster of “unusual pneumonia” cases happening around a market in Wuhan, China. Nine days later, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement declaring the discovery of a “novel corona virus” in a hospitalized person with pneumonia in Wuhan.

Blue Dot uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to peruse information from hundreds of sources for early signs of infectious epidemics. The AI looks at statements from health organizations, commercial flights, livestock health reports, climate data from satellites, and news reports. With so much data being generated on corona virus every day, the AI algorithms can help home in on the bits that can provide pertinent information on the spread of the virus. It can also find important correlations between data points, such as the movement patterns of the people who are living in the areas most affected by the virus. The company also employs dozens of experts who specialize in a range of disciplines including geographic information systems, spatial analytics, data visualization, computer sciences, as well as medical experts in clinical infectious diseases, travel and tropical medicine, and public health.

       The experts review the information that has been flagged by the AI and send out reports on their findings. Combined with the assistance of human experts, Blue Dot’s AI can not only predict the start of an epidemic, but also forecast how it will spread. In the case of COVID-19, the AI successfully identified the cities where the virus would be transferred to after it surfaced in Wuhan. Machine learning algorithms studying travel patterns were able to predict where the people who had contracted corona virus were likely to travel. Recent substantial investment in AI for drug development has meant the start-ups have had the manpower and resources to develop their technologies. Compared to AI in medical imaging the total investment has been more than four-fold, even though the number of funded start-ups is equivalent between the two industries. This makes the average deal size for AI in drug development 3.5 times bigger than in medical imaging. The funding has been spent on significantly expanding and building capacity, as the total number of employees across these AI start-ups is now close to 10,000 globally. Google Deepmind have been using their artificial intelligence engine to quickly predict the structure of six proteins linked to the corona virus, and although they have not been experimentally verified, they may still contribute to the research ultimately leading to therapeutics.