From tracking bat populations to mining social media posts, researchers are leveraging AI to understand the trajectory of infectious diseases.
As Covid-19 spreads around the globe, startups and researchers are using artificial intelligence to model the virus’ path and plan containment strategies.
But this tactic isn’t limited to the coronavirus — over the last several years, AI has helped predict and track infectious diseases from the Zika virus to Dengue fever to the Nipah virus.
Technology such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and location monitoring can pinpoint where outbreaks are likely to occur and forecast how they will spread. Governments and healthcare organizations can then use this information to make faster and more informed decisions about how to respond to the disease.
In this brief, we examine how AI is being used to effectively spot and manage infectious diseases, from tracking outbreaks via social media mentions to identifying at-risk populations based on animal migration patterns.
