Doctors using artificial intelligence to track coronavirus outbreak

With novel coronavirus spreading throughout the United States, researchers are turning to social media and artificial intelligence to track the virus as it spreads. A team headquartered at Boston Children's Hospital is implementing machine learning to scour through social posts, news reports, data from official public health channels and information supplied by doctors for warning signs that the virus is taking hold in locations outside of China. "There's incredible data that's locked away in various tools like online news sites, social media, crowdsourcing, data sources, that you wouldn't think of that would be used for public health," said Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children's Hospital. "But actually they have incredible amounts of information that you wouldn't find in any sort of traditional government system." More than 95,000 people around the world have been infected by the outbreak of novel coronavirus, and more than 3,200 have died -- most in China.