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AI Becomes An Ally In The Fight Against COVID-19 Posted on : Apr 18 - 2020

How machine intelligence is helping healthcare providers fight the pandemic.

In times of crisis, help can come from the most unexpected places. 

We’re seeing that right now in the innovative ways AI is being used to protect healthcare workers and aid the effort to overcome COVID-19. And we’re just scratching the surface on the potential for AI to make the entire healthcare journey safer and more humane for nurses, doctors, and patients. 

At Tampa General Hospital in Florida, an AI-driven technology screens individuals for COVID-19 symptoms before they interact with hospital staff and patients. At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, physician researchers are exploring the use of AI-powered robots to obtain vital signs and deliver medicine in COVID-19 surge clinics, allowing healthcare staff to avoid potentially dangerous human contact. 

This growing human-AI partnership may be the most significant technology trend being accelerated by COVID-19. It’s likely to become a permanent part of our post-pandemic world. In fact, the rapid deployment and scale of these AI tools offers lessons to organizations everywhere—and a glimpse into the future of AI in the workplace. 

True human-AI partnerships

True partnership between humans and their AI assistants have grown out of the pandemic response. 

At Seattle’s Providence St. Joseph Health, an AI-powered chatbot delivers care on an unprecedented scale in an admittedly unprecedented time. In its first week of deployment alone, the chatbot screened and triaged more than 40,000 patients, categorizing them by level of care needed and freeing doctors and nurses to focus on at-risk individuals.

With resources scarce, this type of efficiency is literally lifesaving and shows the ability of AI to augment—not replace—human workers.  

In my conversations with executives around the globe, I’m hearing less about bots replacing people. Instead, the focus is on using AI to enhance agility and eliminate important yet relatively rudimentary and time-consuming tasks. That’s exactly what we are seeing in the healthcare setting today. It’s an example all organizations should seek to emulate moving forward.  View More