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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 21 February 2020
Can AI flag disease outbreaks faster than humans? Not quite

Associated Press outbreaks rely on natural
BOSTON (AP) — Did an ar- language processing, the
tificial-intelligence system same branch of artificial
beat human doctors in intelligence that helps an-
warning the world of a se- swer questions posed to
vere coronavirus outbreak a search engine or digital
in China? voice assistant.
In a narrow sense, yes. But But the algorithms can only
what the humans lacked be as effective as the data
in sheer speed, they more they are scouring, said
than made up in finesse. Nita Madhav, CEO of San
Early warnings of disease Francisco-based disease
outbreaks can help peo- monitoring firm Metabiota,
ple and governments save which first notified its clients
lives. In the final days of about the outbreak in early
2019, an AI system in Boston January.
sent out the first global alert Madhav said that incon-
about a new viral outbreak sistency in how different
in China. But it took human agencies report medical
intelligence to recognize data can stymie algo-
rithms. The text-scanning
programs extract keywords
from online text, but may
In this Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020 photo, John Brownstein, right, co-founder of HealthMap, a system
using artificial intelligence to monitor global disease outbreaks, speaks on a phone in a Health- fumble when organiza-
Map work area at Boston Children's Hospital in Boston. tions variously report new
Associated Press virus cases, cumulative vi-
rus cases, or new cases in a
the significance of the out- public alert, spurred by a its online infrastructure. given time interval. The po-
break and then awaken growing sense of dread "These tools can help hold tential for confusion means
response from the public after reading a personal feet to the fire for govern- there's almost always still a
health community. email she received that ment agencies," said John person involved in review-
What's more, the mere mor- evening. Brownstein, who runs the ing the data.
tals produced a similar alert "This is being passed around HealthMap system as chief "There's still a bit of human
only a half-hour behind the the internet here," wrote her innovation officer at Bos- in the loop," Madhav said.
AI systems. contact, who linked to a ton Children's Hospital. "It Andrew Beam, a Harvard
For now, AI-powered dis- post on the Chinese social forces people to be more University epidemiologist,
ease-alert systems can still media forum Pincong. The open." said that scanning online
resemble car alarms — post discussed a Wuhan The last 48 hours of 2019 reports for key words can
easily triggered and some- health agency notice and were a critical time for un- help reveal trends, but the
times ignored. A network read in part: "Unexplained derstanding the new virus accuracy depends on the
of medical experts and pneumonia???" and its significance. Earlier quality of the data. He
sleuths must still do the hard Pollack, deputy editor of on Dec. 30, Wuhan Central also notes that these tech-
work of sifting through ru- the volunteer-led Program Hospital doctor Li Wenliang niques aren't so novel.
mors to piece together the for Monitoring Emerging Dis- warned his former class- "There is an art to intelli-
fuller picture. It's difficult to eases, known as ProMed, mates about the virus in a gently scraping web sites,"
say what future AI systems, quickly mobilized a team to social media group — a Beam said. "But it's also
powered by ever larger da- look into it. ProMed's more move that led local au- Google's core technology
tasets on outbreaks, may detailed report went out thorities to summon him for since the 1990s."
be able to accomplish. about 30 minutes after the questioning several hours Google itself started its own
The first public alert out- terse HealthMap alert. later. Flu Trends service to detect
side China about the novel Early warning systems that Li, who died Feb. 7 after outbreaks in 2008 by look-
coronavirus came on Dec. scan social media, online contracting the virus, told ing for patterns in search
30 from the automated news articles and gov- The New York Times that it queries about flu symp-
HealthMap system at Bos- ernment reports for signs would have been better if toms. Experts criticized it for
ton Children's Hospital. of infectious disease out- officials had disclosed infor- overestimating flu preva-
At 11:12 p.m. local time, breaks help inform global mation about the epidem- lence. Google shut down
HealthMap sent an alert agencies such as the World ic earlier. "There should be the website in 2015 and
about unidentified pneu- Health Organization — giv- more openness and trans- handed its technology to
monia cases in the Chinese ing international experts a parency," he said. nonprofit organizations
city of Wuhan. The system, head start when local bu- ProMed reports are often such as HealthMap to use
which scans online news reaucratic hurdles and lan- incorporated into other Google data to build their
and social media reports, guage barriers might other- outbreak warning systems. own models.
ranked the alert's serious- wise get in the way. including those run by the Google is now working with
ness as only 3 out of 5. It Some systems, including World Health Organization, Brownstein's team on a sim-
took days for HealthMap ProMed, rely on human ex- the Canadian government ilar web-based approach
researchers to recognize its pertise. Others are partly and the Toronto startup for tracking the geographi-
importance. or completely automated. BlueDot. WHO also pools cal spread of tick-borne
Four hours before the And rather than compet- data from HealthMap and Lyme disease.
HealthMap notice, New ing with one another, they other sources. Scientists are also using
York epidemiologist Mar- are often complementary Computer systems that big data to model pos-
jorie Pollack had already — HealthMap is intertwined scan online reports for in- sible routes of early disease
started working on her own with ProMed and helps run formation about disease transmission. q