By Tatiana Cañas, Media Specialist at Kizuna Tech
Think back to 2019. Did you ever question what was a “normal” day for you? Did you ever think that one day life —as we knew it— would take a complete turn? It is highly unlikely that anyone could have imagined the effects that the Covid-19 pandemic would bring to us. In one way or another. It brought challenges and forced us to be resilient as we were adapting to a “new normal”.
With such a fast-paced development of the virus, we continue to learn new things about it every single day. But we have also learned to cope with other aspects of life that the pandemic has changed. In all of that, artificial intelligence played a valuable role in helping adapt to the new normal. How? you ask. Let’s see.
Social Distancing
One of the biggest changes that came from the Covid-19 pandemic was the idea of social distancing. At a point where hugs, handshakes, and face-to-face conversations were the norms, the pandemic put an end to these and they became what felt like the most prohibited way of communication.
- Covid-19 Screenings
AI technology was used by some companies to perform Covid-19 screenings. This not only avoided the infection of healthcare workers by allowing for social distancing, but it also increased the efficiency in which the screenings were performed.
- Remote Work
Social distancing caused the workforce to quite literally “go home”. AI was a valuable tool for this transition as companies could count on it to create a strategic plan that would allow them to operate efficiently, find better ways to manage employees and automate some tasks. Kizuna Tech, for example, headed a project that allowed for the creation of a work-from-home modality for a multinational medical company.
- Measuring Distance
People were not going to stay home forever and workers from some industries had to go back to working on-site. Amazon created an AI-powered tool to be able to monitor the distance between workers to ensure people comply with the social distancing norms. This technology can also be implemented in places where social gatherings cannot be avoided like supermarkets, for example.
- Data Analysis and Predictions
The potential of data to drive changes at all levels is not surprising and it was no different with data related to Covid-19. Medical records around the world contain more data than humans can understand, which is why artificial intelligence tools have been used to detect similarities and draw conclusions regarding infectious periods, symptoms, and even diagnosis. Artificial Intelligence has been able to understand and explain some of the virus’s biggest mysteries.
Anosmia, which is the loss of smell, is one of the symptoms that occurs during the initial stages of infection. This was found as an AI-powered computer gathered this similarity among various medical records. Similarly, sorting through data it was concluded that most people suffering from Covid-19 reported significant changes in blood coagulation.
What are the benefits of AI
A lot of the information that we currently know about the Covid-19 pandemic is thanks to the AI models that have been developed at a fast pace. AI can tackle the challenges that have come from the pandemic not only in the scientific and medical communities but in other aspects of everyday life too.
If you would like to know how AI can be used as a tool to improve your organization during the pandemic, do not hesitate to contact us at Kizuna Tech.
