On December 31, 2019, customers of a small Toronto-based company got an alert about an unusual outbreak in Wuhan, China. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the news on January 6. The World Health Organization followed on January 9.
The company is BlueDot, which describes itself as an AI-powered health monitoring platform. Fox Business reported that its surveillance program scours news in 65 languages, plus airline data, to pinpoint trouble spots and tell users which areas to avoid. For families and businesses across Asia that were deciding whether to travel, send staff or keep a shop open, a nine-day head start on the WHO could have mattered.
How the machine works, and who checks it
Founder and chief executive Kamran Khan, a physician and University of Toronto researcher, says the software does not decide anything alone. It pairs machine learning with language processing to sift enormous volumes of data, and then doctors and computer programmers review what it finds and write threat reports. Epidemiologists check conclusions and predictions before alerts reach users, government officials and other businesses.
“We don’t use artificial intelligence to replace human intelligence, we basically use it to find the needles in the haystack and present them to our team,” Khan told CNBC. Language processing, he said in a Wired interview, helps the engine tell “an outbreak of anthrax in Mongolia” from “a reunion of the heavy metal band Anthrax”.
The reason for building it goes back to SARS. Khan treated patients during the 2003 outbreak, and it left him with a rule. “What I learned during SARS is, let’s not get caught flatfooted, let’s anticipate rather than react.” He also distrusts waiting for official word. “We know that governments may not be relied upon to provide information in a timely fashion,” he said.
BlueDot launched in 2014. It earlier forecast a Zika outbreak in Florida and published the results in The Lancet. Its website says it helps governments protect citizens, hospitals protect staff and patients, and businesses protect employees and customers. When Fox Business wrote about it, Chinese officials had quarantined Wuhan, a measure that affected the movement of more than 56 million people.
Sources
- A Canadian robot sent coronavirus warnings days before officials | Fox Business
- U of T’s Kamran Khan on how his startup used AI to spot the coronavirus before anyone else: CNBC | University of Toronto
