The Catalyst for a Cure: A.I.
The current situation with the global pandemic has highlighted the inefficiencies and shortcomings of healthcare systems all around the world. In Canada, hospitals that already have overwhelming patient loads and a limited number of doctors, are now facing extreme staff shortages. With a growing number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Canada, hospitals are warning that the healthcare system may not be able to cope if the COVID-19 outbreak continues to worsen.
Despite dire shortages of medical equipment and staff, doctors around the world are harnessing A.I. to ease the brunt of the novel coronavirus outbreak on the healthcare system. In China, Huawei Technologies Co. is providing doctors with machine learning tools to detect signs of COVID-19 in patients via CT scans¹. In France, patients are being triaged by one of the fastest and most affordable ways to detect COVID-19 — chest x-rays². An Israeli A.I. company, Medial EarlySign, has developed a machine learning system designed to identify which patients of Israel’s largest health organization are most vulnerable to severe COVID-19 complications³. Though hospitals, tech giants, and physicians around the world are using automation to improve the healthcare response to COVID-19, there is much evidence to suggest that these changes may last long after the pandemic.
Although Canadian startup BlueDot warned of the novel coronavirus outbreak well before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization⁴, and Chinese authorities⁵, Canada still lags far behind other countries in adopting A.I. technologies into healthcare. This, however, may change. On March 6, 2020, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, Navdeep Bains, announced a $27 million investment in technological and genomic coronavirus research⁶. $2 million of this investment will go directly to machine learning initiatives tackling COVID-19 and its impact on the Canadian healthcare system⁷. The change in the Canadian government’s attitude towards implementing non-traditional changes to Canada’s healthcare system could not have come at a better time — the Canadian coronavirus death toll is now almost 3000. While this global pandemic plagued Canada’s healthcare and economy with a bleak future of uncertainty, one thing is certain: COVID-19 has given A.I. a chance to prove that it is the catalyst for a cure.
