How Artificial Intelligence Could Keep Seniors Safe During a Pandemic

While we don't know everything about COVID-19, we know it hits older populations harder than younger ones. "How can we take care of seniors while keeping them safe?" asks Stanford HAI Denning Family co-director Fei-Fei Li. "Nowhere is safer than home if one doesn't need to be in a hospital." One solution could help protect seniors against COVID-19 while managing chronic illness: in-home sensors and cameras combined with AI-assisted technologies that can gather and analyze information as varied as fevers and sleep patterns. The privacy-protected information can then be shared with clinicians and family, keeping seniors safe while maintaining their independence. Of course, ethics, privacy, and security are paramount in this system; the research process needs to be HIPAA-compliant and approved by the Institutional Review Board for human subjects.