The use of digital and more specifically Artificial Intelligence (or AI) in healthcare has become more and more effective throughout the years. AI has mainly helped in research for various types of medicines, such as for example radiology, plastic surgery, disease diagnosis, as well as for the creation of new drugs amongst many others.
BluDot
But lately, AI has been used to fight a worldwide enemy that we must all know about by now: Covid19. The coronavirus Covid19, which started in Wuhan, China, has now become a worldwide pandemic. While almost every country is on lockdown in order to prevent the spread of the virus, governments and laboratories are trying to find new ways to fight it. As mentioned earlier, AI has already shown great results in terms of healthcare and forerunner countries such as Canada or China have already started to use it in the fight against pandemics. As a matter of fact, it appears that Covid19 had already been detected a while ago by an Artificial Intelligence in Canada created by the start-up BluDot. But how, you wonder? Thanks to their AI, they were able to gather and analyze informatics data (from blog posts, forums, articles, search engines…) in almost 65 different languages. The data, analyzed along with the data gathered from plane tickets, allowed them to obtain as a result a prediction of where and when the epidemic could probably spread next.
CloudMinds Technology
Another example of how AI is helping fight Covid19 happened in China, in February. This time, it is the company CloudMinds Technology that provided hospitals with their 5G connected robots in order to help. Thanks to their algorithms, the robots were able to sanitize the rooms, take the patient’s temperature, deliver drugs when needed… In a crisis such as this one in which we face a lack of health staff due to the amount of work needed, these robots can really change the game.
Smart helmets
Finally, the latest AI feat we can witness during this Covid19 crisis is also happening in Shenzhen, China: police officers have been provided with smart helmets in order to be able to take the temperature of the pedestrians at any given time while being on duty, as it can measure the temperature of a person standing up to 5 meters away from the helmet.
If the temperature is above 37.3°C, an alarm sounds and alerts the officer. Moreover, the infrared camera is hidden inside the helmet, making it look like a regular police officer helmet. And of course, let’s not forget that we are talking about China: not only can the helmets take body temperature, they can also be used for facial recognition!
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