Artificial Intelligence Equipped Supercomputer Mining for COVID-19 Connections in 18 Million Research Documents

Using ORNL's Summit supercomputer, scientists can comb through millions of medical journal articles looking for possible connections among FDA-approved drug therapies and known COVID-19 symptoms. Scientists have tapped the immense power of the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to comb through millions of medical journal articles to identify potential vaccines, drugs, and effective measures that could suppress or stop the spread of COVID-19. A team comprising researchers from ORNL and Georgia Tech are using artificial intelligence methods designed to unearth relevant information from about 18 million available research documents. They looked for connections among 84 billion concepts and cross-referenced keywords associated with COVID-19 -- such as high fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath -- with existing medical solutions. "Our goal is to assist doctors' and researchers' ability to identify information about drug therapies that are already approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration," said ORNL's Ramakrishnan "Ramki" Kannan.