Course introduces students to the promise, challenges, of artificial intelligence in health

May 15, 2020--In the race to stem COVID-19, researchers around the world are testing the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in tasks such as diagnosis and drug discovery. So far, AI's biggest success during the pandemic has been in speeding up the process of identifying existing drugs that can be repurposed to help suffering patients, said Deborah DiSanzo, who recently lectured on COVID-19 in the new course she's leading at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health--Artificial Intelligence in Health. DiSanzo cited in her lecture an AI knowledge graph developed by researchers at the UK startup BenevolentAI and the Imperial College London, which found that baricitinib, a rheumatoid arthritis drug, had the potential to inhibit the virus that causes COVID-19. It and other drugs identified in similar studies have now gone into clinical trials. "Two years ago, finding either a new or repurposed drug target would take six to 18 months," said DiSanzo, a former health care technology executive.