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Improving COVID-19 Predictive Models with Machine Learning

Epidemiological models have difficulty predicting cases rates throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. A new study by mathematicians from Brown University uses an advanced machine learning technique to explore the strengths and weaknesses of commonly used models and suggests ways of making them more predictive.

There is an old saying in the modelling field that ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful. What we show here is that the major COVID-19 models were wrong and also not very useful — at least in terms of predicting the course of the pandemic. There was a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking, but not a lot of accurate predictions.

– George Karniadakis, Professor, Applied Mathematics, Brown University

To find out why that was, the team looked at nine prominent COVID-19 models, all of which were some variation of the “susceptible-infectious-removed” or SIR model. These models divide a population into separate bins: those who have not yet been infected (susceptible), those who are infected and could spread the virus to others (infectious) and those who have had the infection and can no longer spread it (removed). More complicated versions of the SIR model include additional bins that capture rates of quarantine, hospitalisation, deaths and other quantities that could influence the spread of the virus.

Several factors affect the movement of individuals from one bin to another. Movement from “susceptible” to “infectious,” for example, depends on how efficiently the virus jumps from person to person along with how often people come in close contact with each other. Many of these factors cannot be observed directly, and so the models must infer their values from available data. In modelling terms, these factors are known as parameters.

The study found that a major downfall of COVID-19 models was that they treated key parameter values as being fixed over time, despite the fact that these factors shifted dramatically in the real world. For example, the community transmission rate of the virus varied widely depending upon mask use, business closings and re-openings, and other measures.

Hospitalisation rates changed over time as the availability of hospital beds shifted. And the death rate changed with new treatments. All of these evolving factors changed the trajectory of case rates and deaths, but prominent models held these parameters steady in time, which led to poor predictions, the researchers found.

The next question was whether there might be a way to capture these changing parameters in epidemiological models. To do that, the team used physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) — a machine learning technique developed at Brown. PINNs are neural networks similar to those used to recognise images or transcribe speech to text.

But unlike standard neural networks, PINNs are equipped with equations describing the physical laws that govern a system. The team first used PINNs to discover velocities and pressures of fluid flows from images and videos. In those cases, PINNs were equipped with equations used in fluid dynamics. In this case, the team equipped the PINNs with equations used to calculate how pathogens spread.

Considering the fact that pandemics evolve in time and there is a continuous collection of data, PINNs can be retrained as new data is collected and update the models over time with inferred parameters. The computational time needed for re-training PINNs with new data is relatively short compared to the time-scale of pandemic evolution.

The findings suggest that while no model can accurately capture all the dynamics that play out during an extended pandemic, models with the ability to adjust key parameters on the fly could make for more useful predictions.

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Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

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CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

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Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

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SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

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HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

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IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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