UN, WHO & Mila Map the AI vs COVID-19 Battlefield

Despite attempts to contain COVID-19 spread, as of March 26 more than 530,000 people had been infected worldwide and the number of new cases continues to grow at an alarming rate. AI tools have already joined the fight, guiding UAVs to automatically disinfect public areas, tracking disease spread vectors, diagnosing patients, etc. A new project from researchers with the UN Global Pulse Data Science Team, the World Health Organization and the Mila – Quebec AI Institute looks at current studies and programs that are using AI to tackle the COVID-19 crisis and suggests some promising future research directions. The team categorizes the AI applications in three areas; medical, which includes individual patient diagnosis and treatment; molecular, comprising drug discovery-related research; and societal. Most clinical applications of AI during the COVID-19 pandemic response have been in medical imaging diagnosis, amid growing interest in using medical imaging for screening and diagnosis.