AI Bands Together with Humans in the War against Pandemic

Mother nature remains indomitable and unconquerable, but she also gave birth to human beings, our known universe’s most ingenious species.

Looking back, we (humans) have been challenged time and time again, from surviving the ice age, to fighting the Antonine Plague of 165AD, The Black Death caused by the Bubonic plague of 1346 with a death toll of 200 million or Spanish flu of 1918 and the latest – Covid-19, we fought back with everything at our disposal and we have just begun to talk about wits and intelligence of humans.

It was the creative spark in our ancestors, to do things efficiently, that brought about a change in human evolution no one ever anticipated; healing and healthcare being one of them. Yet, we cannot be ignorant of the fact that we have always remained a step behind and it is either because we are wired only to solve the problem(s) or maybe, mother nature does not trust us with 100% of our cerebral capacity yet she continues to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for us to look at the bigger picture. This concept of idea will remain debatable for years to come.

Now that we have talked about healthcare we feel that we need help from an epidemiological level application that can not only solve problems but screen, diagnose and treat health problems while forecasting the future quicker than ever, in short, we need Artificial Intelligence to be the front runner. And, what’s more, surprising is that it was not humans who brought us news on Covid-19 first but an AI platform that scoured every inch of the internet and search indexes to find us a title that said, “7 found critically ill in Wuhan Province”. Unlike healthcare, AI has seen its rise in every sector from retail to banking from e-commerce to supermarkets, and continues to ease the stress on both organizations and end-customers. That said, “don’t you think that it will ease the burden of health workers and fight deadly viruses at the same time?”

Seems like a crazy idea, well – “Every idea is crazy until it’s not.” Elon Musk.

Let us look at the most critical elements Artificial Intelligence can take care of and believe us, we have factored in historical data against AI’s presence in the last few years and this is how it did (or, set out to do). With its strings of ever-evolving algorithms followed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and/or Computed Tomography (CT) scan symptoms of ‘red flags’ thus alarm healthcare authorities. As humans, we are constantly looking for cost-effective solutions and AI can do just that by providing solutions on the go for faster decision making thus saving the life of the patients. Let us look at another scenario, the next time a patient comes knocking at the doctor’s office he or she can successfully trace the contact and monitor them for the future course of the disease and its reappearance, if at all.

AI can track and predict the nature of the virus, its risk of infection, number of cases and death in a region, identify the most vulnerable regions through the available data and media platforms to find appropriate measures. It is also being used by research centres to analyze available data to fight Covid-19 thus speeding up drug testing in real-time. It is now a powerful tool to analyze, diagnose and test vaccination under-development. One of the areas where doctors and nurses spend most of their time is in the file room. Now, imagine finding all the information of a patient’s history on the click of a button. Then, multiply that times the number of walk-ins/interactions each day. It is hard to quantify the exponential savings AI could yield in terms of time and scale at which modern healthcare can impact saving lives and our communities.

As a result oriented full-service engineering and R&D organization, all of us at ATMECS believe that Artificial Intelligence has been brought to existence for the good of humanity. It is our submission that AI, if nurtured right, will continue to become an essential part of our day to day lives and play a pivotal role in how we manage health care. We believe AI will increasingly become an enabler in detection, tracking and monitoring diagnosis not only on ground level but also on a scientific, systematic, and data-driven level reading through frequencies and patterns of health-related states and events (not limited to disease control). With that in mind, we strongly believe in bringing visible transformation for our clients through Automation, AI, adoption of leading edge integrated development platforms, CI/CD, DevOps, Cloud, and Big Data.

To conclude, it is our humble belief that, through the above, neither are we overestimating AI’s presence in human life nor are we trying to undermine human intelligence but we are merely stating our opinion based on empirical evidence.

Author – Tushar Nayak, ATMECS Content Team