AI Can Help Us Fight Infectious Diseases In A More Effective Way

“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s more?likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. It will be microbes not missiles. Part of the reason for this is that we’ve invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents,?but we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.”???????????

Bill Gates, TED Talk, March 2015

Throughout history humans have struggled against infectious diseases. Although many effective medicines have been developed, new viruses continue to challenge us.?The COVID-19 pandemic has created a sense of urgency to improve current approaches to prevent and treat infectious diseases. Fortunately, currently available AI and data science approaches can help us fight infectious diseases in a more effective way.

Progress in the 20th Century

There were three major breakthroughs in the 20th century- sanitization,?immunization, and?antibiotics - that improved human health and increased average life expectancy by at least 20 years. In the last 100 years, humans have challenged viruses more than they have in thousands of years. Although we’ve made progress, new infectious diseases have continued to emerge and some have lead to serious outbreaks and pandemics.

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In a pandemic, as the number of people infected with the virus increases, the rate of growth also increases. Technology and pandemics are both evolving exponentially, but sources of mega-pandemics from viruses and microbes are evolving at a double exponential rate. This includes natural viruses but could potentially include weaponized viruses. An example of a weaponized virus would be influenza + HIV embedded in mosquitoes, used in biological warfare. AI could help neutralize this disproportion and allow biopharma to catch up to the rate of pandemic evolution.?Current technology can be applied to decrease the threat of pandemics.?Even without?next-generation AI systems progress can be made.

“The Canadian military is preparing for multiple?waves of COVID19 over the next 12 months”??????????????????????

General Jonathan Vance, Canadian Armed Forces

Personalized Targeted Immunization

There are several approaches that can be taken with currently available technology. One approach is to apply data science techniques to personalized vaccination on a massive scale. Another is to optimize immunization management using AI. By using AI, big data, and small data techniques together, vaccines could be distributed on a massive scale in a more sophisticated and precise way. This could be accomplished by using AI to analyze personal data, such as genetics, to predict an individual’s risk and potential sensitivity to specific vaccines.?Then, AI could be applied to design personalized sets of vaccines optimized for each individual.?AI based individual profiling for optimization of immunization management could be applied now. The required technology is available. AI could be used to analyze personal data such as ethnicity, age, gender, blood type, weight, BMI, frailty, and pre-existing conditions that may put an individual at increased risk to certain viruses. Once profiled, people could receive recommendations for vaccines against specific viruses based on their vulnerability.?

COVID Symptom Tracker App?

The?COVID Symptom Tracker App?was created by doctors and scientists at King's College London, Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals working in partnership with ZOE Global Ltd – a health science company. The app will be used to study the symptoms of COVID-19 and track the spread of the virus. This research is led by Prof. Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and director of TwinsUK. TwinsUK is a scientific study of 15,000 twins, which has been running for almost thirty years. As well as using the app to study symptoms in the general population – TwinsUK will use it to understand how symptoms develop with 5000 participating twins.

This research aims to help scientists develop a better understanding of COVID-19. They will analyze the data to understand how fast the virus is spreading in specific areas, identify high risk areas, and to identify who is most at risk by better understanding symptoms linked to health conditions.?The app gives researchers an opportunity to see how symptoms evolve over time in different risk groups, and to find patterns to who gets a mild disease. This information will be very important if there is a second wave of the virus later this year or next year.?The app launched in the UK and 1.3 million people are already logging their symptoms. That’s 2% of the UK population. The app developers are working on a version for the US which they plan to release soon.?

Now is the time to develop advanced techniques and approaches for next-generation R&D.?At this critical point, we should actively use DeepTech and frontier technologies to address the major risks and challenges facing us.?We could start by incorporating currently available AI to improve vaccines and treatments to protect humans from infectious diseases.?In the next article I will explore advanced R&D and the most relevant AI technologies that are currently being developed to fight COVID19.

This article was?originally published in Forbes?on March 27, 2020.

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Copyright ? 2020 Margaretta Colangelo. All Rights Reserved.

This article was written by?Margaretta Colangelo.?Margaretta is a leading AI analyst based in San Francisco. She serves on the advisory board of the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawai?i?Cancer Center.?

Twitter?@realmargaretta