COVID-19 Puts Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to infect people across the world, a technological application already familiar to many in the biotech field is lending a key supporting role in the fight to treat and stop it: artificial intelligence (AI). AI is currently being used by many companies to identify and screen existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat COVID-19, aid clinical trials, sift through trial data, and scour through patient electronic medical records (EMRs). The power of AI in COVID-19 is that it is being used to generate actionable information--some of which would be impossible without AI--much more quickly than before. A simple definition of AI is the ability of a computer to rapidly think and learn. AI utilizes machine learning to analyze large amounts of data.