How AI and Blockchain can fight the next COVID
Artificial intelligence is being used in almost every part of technology these days. Machine learning
and computer vision make self-driving cars and robot assistants a reality.
But AI is more than just a tool for convenience and robotic companionship. Some of the most notable advances attributed to AI are in healthcare, and more applications for the new technology are being followed up every day.
New technology for a new virus
COVID-19 forced researchers and medical science researchers to find innovative solutions at a rapid pace. Operation Warp Speed, a collaboration between the US government and private companies to facilitate and accelerate the development, production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, was aptly named. Less than 12 months from the identification of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen, a vaccine was developed.
The speed of the rollout can largely be attributed to the technology implemented in the development process. Messenger RNA, viral vectors and spike protein technology played the biggest role, but AI helped create a model for the vaccine.
Researchers used natural language processing models, a sub-branch of AI, to understand the structure of the virus to predict what immune response a potential treatment would trigger. This is how the vaccine method and its content were determined.
Blockchain’s role in tracking
Identifying virus origins and targeting early outbreaks before they spread to a global scale are crucial procedures to prevent the spread of a new coronavirus and subsequent pandemic.
Blockchain tracking technology can help health organizations and local governments stop outbreaks at their source, minimizing the need for widespread lockdowns that disrupt daily life and impede the perpetual motion of the economy.
Early warning systems require rapid identification of the starting point of a virus. Early COVID infections were traced back to vendors or shoppers at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. However, the tracking process was slow and required multiple strategies to implement. Metric tons of food cross geographic borders on a daily basis, so tracing infections back to a source can be logistically difficult and time-consuming.
Through the blockchain, analysts can trace monetary transactions back to markets where infected animals are sold and discern where, and from what source, a virus first spread.
AI Analytics
More data means more solutions. Preventing the spread of disease requires real-time information and analytics. Advances in big data analysis through AI are revolutionizing how data is collected in health situations like COVID-19. AI algorithms can sift through data collected from smart devices, bench-top analyzers, and hospital or pharmacy records to create a comprehensive network of relevant data for researchers to analyze. The amount of time it would take humans to collect and sort through that amount of raw data would render the information almost useless, as a virus could have already spread to other regions and mutated into new variants.
With a network of virus detection sensors powered by AI and location tracking technology, local advisories and quarantines can be implemented faster and with greater accuracy, saving lives and alerting nearby regions of infections.
The role of AI in T-cell mapping
AI models can improve current vaccines and provide the building blocks for creating new ones by targeting previously uncharted T cells.
The immune system works by using white blood cells to identify pathogens in the body and initiate a defense response against them. The immune system then stores information about previously encountered pathogens as a biological record book.
White blood cells, or lymphocytes, contain B cells that produce antibodies against pathogens, and T cells that destroy the targets. T cells target viruses by latching onto surface proteins on viral cells and destroying them.
The problem for researchers when creating effective vaccines is to find which T cells latch on to which proteins.
“An individual is estimated to carry more different T-cell keys than there are stars in the Milky Way,” according to Medical Life Sciences News.
A new AI model developed by researchers at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki improves current vaccines and provides the building blocks to create new ones by finding new lock and key combinations of previously unmapped T cells.
“The AI model we created is flexible and can be applied to all possible pathogens – as long as we have enough experimentally produced key-lock pairs,” said Emmi Jokinen, M.Sc. and a Ph.D. student at Aalto University. “For example, we were quickly able to apply our model to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus when a sufficient number of such pairs were available.”
A future without pandemics
COVID presented all unique challenges. Unprecedented public policies were implemented to varying degrees around the world, scientists were faced with solving a global pandemic with little information to work with, and people were cut off from family and friends.
However, the lessons learned during the emergence of COVID in all sectors, along with advances in AI and blockchain technology, may facilitate a new understanding of how to combat pandemics. With the current tools at our disposal, new viruses can be contained, so that the scale of the pandemic will hopefully never be seen again.
