In the midst of a crisis as big as COVID-19 which has as per the current update taken more than 80,000 lives around the world and caused nations to go under a lockdown, machine learning and artificial intelligence has played a vital role in detecting COVID-19 positive cases and helping fast track the tests and analysis of drugs that can be a solution to the problem.
Countries around the world are building algorithms to better understand the molecular structure of the diseaseso that the so-called protein around the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be blocked.
Use of AI and machine learning around the world
The legendary story of a Canada-based AI named Bluedot is not something one can forget. Buledot is a low cost AI based tool that predicted the outbreak of the disease in December 2019 and also predicted the top 20 destinations where passengers from Wuhan, the origin of pandemic, would arrive.
Deargen a South-Korean company built an AI tool named MT-DTI to test and analyze the molecular bond of the SARS-CoV-2 protein and recommend medication on the basis of the same. Even though their recommendations are yet to be reviewed and tested properly, their find might prove to be a super solution to reduce the number of death counts and covid positive cases.
Insilico Medicine, a Hong-Kong based company instead of building a platform to recommend the currently available medication to break the protein of covid-19 virus and stop it from replicating, built an AI based tool to formulate and test the potency of new and chemically advanced medication to break the chain.
Benevolent AI, a British startup based on its machine learning tool discovered six important covid-19 virus fighting compounds that can prove to be helpful in curing and limiting the spread of the disease. Out of the six compounds discovered, ‘baricitinib’, a compound used to cure rheumatoid arthritis according to the sources, proves to be the safest compound that can be tested on the covid positive volunteers.
Use of AI and machine learning in India
The spread of the covid-19 pandemic in India began by the end of January 2020 and till date more than 5000 cases have been reported. The Government of India declared a lockdown by mid-March 2020 and in the middle of all this when misinformation and rumors were rising day by day, to tackle the problem the Government of India launched its covid-19 tracking app called Aarogya Setu that means ‘a bridge of health’.
This AI-based app uses bluetooth and the mobile location of the user and informs them if there is any person covid positive within 6 feet of their location or not. The app checks the user’s data in their own database and in case the data matches a corona positive patient then it only notifies their presence keeping their identity anonymous.
India has also launched a whatsapp chatbot and any one using the whatsapp platform can access the chatbot by simply typing “MyGov Corona Helpdesk” and get the relevant and authentic information relating to the symptoms and how they can get help from direct sources.
Apart from the above initiatives to tackle the pandemic, medical practitioners, data analysts and data scientists from around the world are trying to find ways and means and analyzing the database to capture the trends and are working day and night to find best possible cure to fight the disease.
To know more, do read DexLab Analytics previous blogs on how AI is helping fight the coronavirus pandemic here. DexLab Analytics is a premiere artificial intelligence training institute in Gurgaon that gives Machine Learning training in Gurgaon.
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