Previous year left us with (large) choice of what do you believe COVID has altered the most. Many industries have gleamed (e.g. video conferencing), some folded cards and gestured in resignation (e.g. hotels). Besides the ingenious pharma effort in vaccine development, there is less obvious 2020 hero in health sector. Artificial intelligence managed to prove it can detect diseases at their out-break, before tardy human-based detection networks can even put their protective cloth on.
You may have heard that smart watches (enabled with oximeter) could detect COVID from oxygen level in blood readings (and AI algorithm behind), but news of detecting the COVID from cough might not have reached ears of all. Yes, within few weeks after COVID outbreak there has been AI project completed that detected COVID from mere cough sound recording of the patient, with accuracy beating Antigen tests and without infected person going anywhere (which is benefit of itself).
But he lessons to take here is not anecdotal, rather fundamental. If there is something that Machine learning is strong in, then it is detecting something for which you have annotated examples of. So may it be another pandemic, or just important enough illness, if it has visual or audial symptoms, it can be immediately geared into AI detection. Now think of all the (PCR test cases) waste and human effort that could have been saved with COVID tests if all you had to do was cough into microphone.
Yes, artificial intelligence has proven that it is ready to take over significant burden of mass (symptoms) testing. And it can claim early stage detection role in health-care systems. If only doctors let go …
Publikované dňa 10. 1. 2021.
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