To combat infectious diseases that may spread on a large scale, time is a critical factor. The earlier the warnings are issued, the greater the chance of containing the outbreak of that infectious disease.
However, information sources from the government and international organizations are not always accurate and timely. But a health monitoring platform has found a way to help the world win the race for early warning about the outbreak of the coronavirus.
On January 9 of this year, WHO publicly announced the outbreak of a flu-like illness in China when a series of pneumonia cases were detected in Wuhan, but a few days earlier, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had issued a warning about this disease. However, the messages from both organizations came after BlueDot, a Canadian AI-based health monitoring startup, warned about this on December 31.
BlueDot uses machine learning techniques in natural language processing to analyze news reports in 65 different languages worldwide, aviation data, as well as reports on animal disease outbreaks.
While the artificial intelligence algorithms will handle data screening, the analysis will be conducted by humans. Epidemiologists will review and draw conclusions based on scientific perspectives. Ultimately, these reports will be sent to the company’s clients, including public health officials in various countries, airlines, and leading hospitals, to provide early warnings about where the outbreak may occur.
According to Mr. Kamran Khan, CEO and founder of BlueDot: “We can search for news about potential outbreaks, rumors, or on forums or blogs for signs that unusual events are occurring.”
However, Mr. Khan also stated that his algorithm does not use social media posts due to the chaotic nature of the data.
Moreover, thanks to access to global flight booking data, BlueDot can predict where infected residents might travel to and when. As a result, they accurately predicted that the virus would spread from Wuhan to cities like Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo after its emergence.
The early forecast about the coronavirus is not BlueDot’s first success. Previously, this startup successfully predicted the outbreak location of the Zika virus in South Florida in 2016.
While more time is needed to assess BlueDot’s success this time, public health experts note that compared to the announcement of the SARS outbreak months after it began in 2002, Chinese officials have reacted much more quickly to the coronavirus this time.
Eight cities with about 35 million people in China have been locked down to prevent the spread of the virus during the peak travel season for the country’s residents. According to Mr. James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, if not warned early, this outbreak could spread on a much larger scale considering the number of people traveling from China during this time.
Reference Wired