First Hints Of The Wuhan Virus Outbreak Were Caught By AI

An AI-driven health monitoring and disease detection platform was able to catch the signs of the Wuhan viral outbreak approximately a week before government agencies warned the public, providing a look at how AI can be used to catch disease outbreaks in a timely fashion. While the official World Health Organization notification of the Wuhan virus went out on January ninth and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received word of the outbreak on January sixth, the first warning signs of the outbreak were picked up by a Canadian health monitoring system almost a week prior. As Wired reported, the AI-driven health system BlueDot warned its clients about the possible outbreak on December 31st. Bluedot uses AI algorithms to monitor different global news sources and detect patterns in health reports. It also takes into account information on plant and animal disease networks. Using the information it collects, BlueDot epidemiologists then delivers warnings and predictions about possible health risks and outbreaks to its subscribers.