covid19

Covid-19 & AI: Fighting Pandemics

For the last 20 years or so, I have been working on various international projects some of which are related to managing disasters via technology, especially with mobile technologies. TheNextMinds.com, a new AI start up, is committed to having AI serve the social good, and the new issues arising from the spread of Covid-19 in the world has become an important part of our work at TheNextMinds. 

It is so obvious that using technology such as AI, can help with epidemics in similar circular phases as disaster management – mitigation or prevention, preparing to fight, responding or fighting the epidemic, and finally recovering from the impact.

While there are now and there will be a number of significant efforts related to all of these phases by leading AI organizations of the world to fight the Covid-19, the actual experience gained from this current and urgent spread will help us to manage similar epidemics in the future better. Perhaps one of the first lessons is importance of realizing that information systems in general and, AI in particular should be a core component of public health management systems through these phases.

The purpose of this article is to show how AI fits the job via some of the existing examples whenever possible and what are the implications for current and future implementations as well as expectations after the struggle with covid-19. 

How AI may help during mitigation or prevention, preparation for, responding and recovery phases of pandemics?