COVID-19: How AI Is Helping In The Fight

In the past decades, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is one of the most infectious diseases to have spread on our planet Earth. As we have seen that this virus has already created havoc in the entire world, so it becomes necessary to take the help of technology, and here AI comes into the picture.

Here in this article, I will be discussing the significant role of AI in fighting Coronavirus. Let's get started.

Artificial Intelligence in a fight with Coronavirus

Deadly disease outbreaks such as the Coronavirus often stretch out too quickly for scientists to find a cure. But in the coming time, artificial intelligence could help out researchers and scientists perform a better job.

It’s probably late for technology to play a significant role in the current pandemic disease, but there’s hope for the next calamities that may occur in the future. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can comb through data mounds to discover connections. 

So, it becomes easier to resolve what kinds of treatments could work or which experiments to seek next.

The last monthly report of the World Health Organization said AI and big data were an essential part of China's response to the Novel CoronaVirus.

According to a report, British start-up Company Exscienta became the first-ever company to put an AI-designed drug molecule to human trials this year. It took only 12 months for algorithms to discover it, in comparison with four to five years of traditional research. AI could be used in three different ways in the current crisis:

AI could be used to develop antibodies and vaccines for the Covid-19 virus rapidly.

It can be used to scan through existing drugs to check if any could be remodeled.

AI is used to design a drug to fight both the current and future Novel Coronavirus outbreaks.

But people should be realistic about what AI could achieve.

Amid the Outbreak of the Coronavirus, some tech industries and scientists are seeking Artificial Intelligence for a positive impact.

This crisis has shown how AI can potentially do a world of good," said Oren Etzioni, CEO of Seattle's Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2).

Different ways AI is fighting COVID-19 Outbreak

As COVID-19 reaches more than 140 countries with rapidly increasing cases up to 422,966, the entire world is doing its best to shun the calamity.

While organizations such as WHO and the UN are discharging funds to expedite research, many are looking towards AI to break the current crisis. 

Scientists and researchers across the world are trying their best to stop the Coronavirus Outbreak by taking the help of AI.

Let's see how AI is used in fighting the Coronavirus Effect.

AI Detects With Higher Accuracy

According to a recent report, AI systems can detect Coronavirus in CT scans of patient’s chests with an accuracy of 96% against pneumonia cases. 

Most of the software development companies in India are trying with AI systems & new algorithms that cut down the whole process of recognition. This is far-reaching progress considering the traditional methods that would take approximately 15 min to analyze a CT scan.

Baidu's Artificial Intelligence team has launched a software - LinearFold to reduce Coronavirus prediction time from 55 minutes to just  27 seconds. This cut down of prediction time is significant for understanding the virus and in catalyzing the drug discovery. 

ML For Social Media Auditing

Machine learning is being used to glance through Social Media and other forms of data from official public health platforms and healthcare providers. This is done to formulate the real-time health analytics of the disruption.

Designing Molecular Structure

Many companies that use AI for drug discovery are using generative adversarial networks GANs to refine the molecule designs. Molecule amalgam and testing is a slow process. 

Now, this is where AI comes into play by bringing the synthesis time and developing more options to design distinct molecular structures. Yet, synthesis and affirmation might take some time and could require significant resources as well. 

AI-powered Medical Imaging

In China, Doctors have been provided with a new powerful tool called inferVISION, which could help them quickly investigate Novel Covid-19 patients. This AI-based utility can promptly identify potential cases within no or very little time.

InferVISION entirely relies on NVIDIA's Clara SDKs, which is NVIDIA's AI healthcare application framework for AI-powered Medical Imaging.

The software can identify common signs of COVID-19 in suspected ones. The tool looks out for signals of pneumonia that can be caused by the Coronavirus.

Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is much safer in comparison with fingerprinting as it eliminates the chances of disease being spread through human contact.

So, AI is being used to scan the faces of the people with masks. Hence, encouraging contact-less identification of the affected with their temperature detection tool. And it has been deployed at underground stations, schools and other community places in most of the affected countries.

Drones for the Rescue

Drones have come to the rescue in some of the majorly affected areas by transporting medical equipment and patient samples. Therefore, it is saving time, increasing delivery speed. Also, it is avoiding the risk of samples being infected. 

Moreover, they are also flying with QR code placards that can be examined to register health information. 

Robots

Robots are being used widely to disinfect patient rooms with zero human intervention, as we all know, how these pandemics make social assistance critical and threatening. So, the medical people are at serious risk of catching the Coronavirus.

The robotic pods transmit ultraviolet light over the region to be disinfected and eliminate any virus. Currently, we are in a very critical situation of the Outbreak. Thus, drug discovery and diagnosis have become necessary, and with AI, there will be immense time saving and, indeed, the lives of humanity.

Wrapping-up

So, by now, you must be aware of the role of AI in fighting Coronavirus. Companies are putting their AI technologies to work to predict which existing drugs, or new drug-like molecules, could treat the Coronavirus.

Although it's quite early to say whether they are heading in the right direction, they are making exemplary efforts to fight novel Coronavirus.