Around 6 months since the first case of Coronavirus (COVID-19) was reported in China, the virus has spread to 210 countries and territories around the world. The number of confirmed cases are reported to be around 2,083,304 at the time of writing this blog.

While scientists and researchers around the world are studying the novel coronavirus to find a cure, technology has put up a parallel crusade to fight this crisis on various fronts. From dataset-management to make scientists’ work easier to building apps for public safety, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and data science are proving to be invaluable soldiers in the battle against this pandemic.

The Silence Before The Storm

Back in late-2019 when novel coronavirus was being thought of (or even dismissed) as a ‘Chinese thing’, Toronto-based AI start-up BlueDot had sounded the warning bell of a possible massive global outbreak.

On December 30, 2019, had issued an alert about a cluster of “unusual pneumonia” cases happening around a market in Wuhan, China. BlueDot’s AI engine collects data on over 150 diseases and syndromes around the world from sources such as the Center for Disease Control or the World Health Organization. Additionally, the BlueDot engine also searches for news reports and airline ticketing data from around the world. This information is updated every 15 minutes.

Using the massive data at its disposal, the BlueDot AI engine is capable of prognosticating an outbreak and spread of infections. Using air travel data, the system accurately predicted that novel coronavirus would spread to Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo after its outbreak in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province.

BlueDot uses a mix of natural language processing, disease surveillance and analysis, machine learning to scour and sift data and human analysis to create its prediction reports.

Testing The Waters

Even in the very early stages, when the Chinese government was struggling to contain the outbreak, Chinese tech companies including tech giants like Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei, were amping-up their healthcare tech initiatives.

Around February-March, Alibaba developed an AI system that could diagnose coronavirus in patients’ chest CT scans with 96% accuracy. As opposed to manual testing which takes around 15 minutes, this system could do it within 20 seconds. Using ML (Machine Learning) technology on images and data from 5,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, Alibaba’s AI has reduced the workload on medical practitioners across China who have been overwhelmed with patient-surge since December.

Similarly, Terra Drone, a Japanese company, ensured that medical and other supplies were safely transported from Xinchang County’s disease control centre to Xinchang County People’s Hospital without any human involvement, to avoid the spread of infection. Terra Drone’s KazUAV drones are also helping the police monitor Kazakhastan’s capital Nur-Sultan for violations of lockdown policies.

The Inside Story

While lockdowns and social distancing can help in containing the outbreak, it may not be enough to stop the spread completely. Unless and until scientists and researchers find a vaccine for the virus, a repeat of this pandemic cannot be ruled out, even if the curve is flattened.

AI could be enormously helpful for vaccine discovery. Scientists have been working on proteins (known as amino acids) since the 1950s. The enormous databases of proteins available must be scoured through and studied to understand the protein behind the virus. Screening through millions of chemical compounds via an AI system would be a lot more fast and reliable compared to human efforts. Understanding the three-dimensional shape of the proteins in COVID-19 could be key to finding vaccines against it.

On these lines, Google’s DeepMind division has developed AlphaFold, a deep-learning system, focussing on predicting protein structure for COVID-19.

The Larger Picture

In March, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Allen Institute for AI (AI2), Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Microsoft Research, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, and the National Library of Medicine at National Institutes of Health teamed up to create CORD-19 (COVID-19 Open Research Dataset). CORD-19 has brought nearly 51,000 research papers about COVID-19 under a single umbrella. These papers would be accessible to AI researchers who can use it to create ML models that can help scientists find the information they need.

In our previous blog, we discussed how the Indian government’s app AarogyaSetu alerts a user if they have crossed paths or come in contact with an infected person. The app also comes with a tool for self-testing questionnaire and self-isolation advice.

It is a little ironic that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning which until last year were associated with security concerns and loss of jobs are now at the forefront of one of the most important battles being fought in modern times. The battle is not over yet, and AI, ML and big data will continue to play an important part in making the victory over this virus a fast and permanent one.

The global outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has plunged many industries across the world in a deep state of crisis. The tech industry is seeing its share of challenges too, such as limited workforce, revenue slowdown, and diverted supplies. As we pass through this very tough phase and after we come out of it, the industry would have experienced a sea-change unto itself. Status quos will be broken, old-world patterns will be brought down and new stalwarts will emerge.

The Remote Miracle

The tech industry is one of the few sectors that has the unique advantage of getting its work done despite its workforce being spread across different locations. To stay operational most companies, from the biggest movers and shakers to smallest players, are encouraging their employees to work from home. This might easily be the world’s biggest remote work experiment.

Before the global pandemic, remote working was considered a millennial trend, with only about 18% of the global population adopting a remote work lifestyle. Europe and Asia have experienced the shock of a transitional shift in working patterns more than the USA, as these regions weren’t always receptive of the remote work model. Remote Work was being referred to as the ‘Future of Work’ until about January 2020. Turns out, the future is here. 2020 is going to be a revolutionary year for remote work arrangements and we will see more remote companies and more distributed teams sprout in the post-Corona world.

The Healthcare Heroism

The Healthcare Tech industry, acknowledged but not given priority so far, is suddenly going to see an upsurge. Chinese companies including Alibaba have already shown that technology will play an important role in the way data is collected for healthcare and healthcare is delivered in times of a pandemic. Ping An, a Chinese company, reported a 10-fold increase in the number of users on its online health care and consultation platform between 22 January and 6 February 2020, compared to the first 21 days of 2020.

In India, too, the government has launched the Aarogya Setu app to help citizens identify their risk of contracting coronavirus. Using Bluetooth and GPS-generated social graph, the app keeps the user updated if they have crossed paths or come in contact with an infected person. The app also comes with a tool for self-testing questionnaire and self-isolation advice.

In South Korea, the government mobilized private companies on a large-scale to start manufacturing Coronavirus testing kits using AI technology, helping them speed up research and production by atleast three weeks. Similarly, pharma companies in the UK and USA too are using AI to speed up the discovery of vaccines and drugs by crunching large datasets from healthcare apps.

There is a dire need, and receptiveness for technology-driven healthcare solutions, and there is a good chance investor, as well as users, will be willing to give them a lot more priority in the coming future.

Governments too will increase their dependency and of healthcare tech, as they realize that tech solutions make it easier for them to trace, track and control a disease that holds the potential to affect a majority of their population. The industry will show a willingness to invest in as many (or more) healthcare ventures as they have in Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality or Ecommerce in these past few.

The Ripple Effect

In the post-Coronavirus world, the tech industry will have also learned to not live in a bubble. Industries don’t exist in isolated planes and are more co-dependent on each other than it was ever thought.

The tech industry specifically, started feeling the brunt in early 2020 itself, when the outbreak in China and neighbouring countries resulting in worldwide temperature-checks and health tests at airports. Tech executives and CEOs had a hard time travelling from one place to another. With Uber and Lyft having to suspend car pool services in lieu of the circumstance, their demand and stocks nosedived. With more and more governments asking citizens to stay in and not travel unless necessary, aviation companies and rideshare / cab aggregator companies are bound to feel the heat.

The Consumer Shift

The pandemic will also shift customer behavior patterns forever. Customers who were not in favour of buying groceries and fresh produce online (for lack of trust, mainly), have had to shift to online ordering for daily essentials. There is a good chance that many of them have crossed over to the permanently-online-purchasers category and will stay there well after the time of crisis is over.

Just like remote working, the education sector, too, has quickly adapted to remote learning. With a plethora of tools and options available to make learning possible from distributed locations, remote learning or the ‘e-learning’ industry is bound to see a massive surge in the userbase. Educational institutes will show readiness to adapt more flexible learning methodologies and make learning more interactive, now that they know it is possible and working.

For organizations too, the outbreak may have accelerated the new ‘normal’ in how they get work done. Even the biggest names were sluggish in putting into place virtual office infrastructure as they treated ‘work from home’ more of a benefit than a habit. With employees realizing that with the right infrastructure and attitude, remote work can be just as, or even more, productive as work from office, companies are going to have to virtualize business operations on a massive scale after the pandemic. After all, will someone wasting 60 to 75 minutes commuting to and from work, want to go back to it after experience the convenience of remote work lifestyle? The Coronavirus outbreak maybe a tipping point for the remote work model, the same way as World War II was for the 9 to 5 model.

The Black Swan Theory

More than anything else, the tech industry will now be prepared to face situations it never would have predicted could happen. The tech industry will increase its expenditure on remote tech and cybersecurity to be prepared for a ‘black swan’ event like this. Even as some countries just ignored the risks of Coronavirus (despite warnings), some went into a pre-mature drive to stop it in its track. The tech industry, neither was prepared nor ready, to handle a cataclysm of this scale. Some companies jumped into action quickly, while most took their own sweet time to make critical calls.

Technology has been one of the biggest pillars of strength for the society as online channels have made everything possible and available even as quarantine and lockdowns have increased. It will also have to play an important part in administrative and healthcare efforts as the post-Corona world will look to be better prepared and battle-ready for another global mishap.