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When an epidemic spreads, it's vital to alert people who may have been infected but are yet to show symptoms. This process is called contact tracing, and across the world officials are spending long nights and weekends interviewing patients to identify people at risk. "The challenge is that, right now, it takes a significant amount of time to identify close contacts of the person who has been infected," says Akshay Saigal, Head of Innovation Labs for Asia at DXC Technology. "The track and trace is very manual and takes huge teams of dedicated officials to perform." He thinks that tech innovation can make a big difference to nations in need and spoke with GovInsider about three steps that officials can use for faster contact tracing.

The graph represents a network of 3,290 Twitter users whose tweets in the requested range contained "govtech", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets. The network was obtained from the NodeXL Graph Server on Monday, 23 December 2019 at 07:09 UTC. The requested start date was Monday, 23 December 2019 at 01:01 UTC and the maximum number of days (going backward) was 14. The maximum number of tweets collected was 5,000. The tweets in the network were tweeted over the 13-day, 9-hour, 49-minute period from Monday, 09 December 2019 at 01:50 UTC to Sunday, 22 December 2019 at 11:39 UTC.

Consider what healthcare systems are faced with today: People are living longer, but having fewer children. Many countries are ill-equipped to support and care for a growing number of elderly citizens. The prevalence of chronic diseases brings an added layer of complexity into the mix – and healthcare insurers are racing to adapt, notes Arvind Mathur, Chief Information Technology Officer of Prudential Singapore. "Traditionally, insurance has been defined in certain ways, with very specific kinds of products and capabilities," he tells GovInsider. "But as the needs are changing and as our consumers are evolving, those products and solutions are no longer sufficient."

Artificial intelligence is a key component of the future of healthcare. Indeed, the era of the AI doctor seems to be unavoidable. Today, we see AI in hospitals helping clinicians identify medical risks; predict when to provide targeted, life-saving interventions; form treatment plans for patients with rare diseases; and deliver precision medicine. However, one of the benefits associated with AI may actually be a disadvantage in healthcare. While AI excels at making unbiased, purely logical decisions, it cannot yet appreciate the complex blend of emotional, social, cultural and physical needs of people.

Artificial intelligence is a key component of the future of healthcare. Indeed, the era of the AI doctor seems to be unavoidable. Today, we see AI in hospitals helping clinicians identify medical risks; predict when to provide targeted, life-saving interventions; form treatment plans for patients with rare diseases; and deliver precision medicine. However, one of the benefits associated with AI may actually be a disadvantage in healthcare. While AI excels at making unbiased, purely logical decisions, it cannot yet appreciate the complex blend of emotional, social, cultural and physical needs of people.

Officials in Moscow, like many other city governments, are discussing how artificial intelligence technologies can help the city do its work better. But the Russian capital has perhaps the most pervasive vision for AI in government yet. "We want AI to work everywhere," Moscow's Chief Information Officer, Artem Ermolaev, tells GovInsider. His team is already trialling AI to advise doctors in treating cancer patients; help residents find new homes; and assess applications for government services and support. "The Moscow vision of the future is when artificial intelligence is equal to humans – or sometimes, artificial intelligence is higher than the human," he says.

In the hit movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Iron Man shows the'brains' of a computer system to his colleague, the Incredible Hulk. "I mean, look at this! They're like neurons firing," the Hulk exclaims, pointing to a pulsating, blue orb which represented super baddie Ultron's consciousness. We'd like to think that's what neural networks look like too. They are a rising field of artificial intelligence, and a new trend that is coming to a government near you. Neural networks describe a computing technique that closely imitates human brain functions. "By using neural networks, we try to mimic nature's ability to learn how certain things work," Associate Professor Andy Chun from City University of Hong Kong's Department of Computer Science tells GovInsider.

How do babies learn things in the first few years of their lives? They observe and imitate everyone around them. If Mummy is stacking blocks that keep toppling over, Junior can still get what she is trying to do, even though she doesn't succeed. Just like human babies, computers can teach themselves. This field is called machine learning, and it has become a big trend in the public sector.