Harnessing big data and artificial intelligence to predict future pandemic spread

During COVID-19, artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to enhance diagnostic efforts, deliver medical supplies and even assess risk factors from blood tests. Now, artificial intelligence is being used to forecast future COVID-19 cases. Texas A&M University researchers, led by Dr. Ali Mostafavi, have developed a powerful deep-learning computational model that uses artificial intelligence and existing big data related to population activities and mobility to help predict the future spread of COVID-19 cases at a county level. The researchers published their results in IEEE Access. The spread of pandemics is influenced by complex relationships related to features including mobility, population activities and sociodemographic characteristics. However, typical mathematical epidemiological models only account for a small subset of relevant features.