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Utilising AI and Social Media for Early Disease Outbreak Detection

AI and Social Media for Early Disease Outbreak Detection
Photo Credit: CSIRO

Researchers from CSIRO’s Data61, the data science arm of Australia’s national science agency, and UNSW Sydney’s Kirby Institute have developed a new tool that harnesses artificial intelligence and Twitter for the earlier detection of acute disease events.

An example of this is the thunderstorm asthma epidemic that hit Melbourne three years ago.

According to a recent press release, thunderstorm asthma is the triggering of an asthma attack by environmental conditions directly caused by a local thunderstorm.

The sudden outbreak in Melbourne on 21 November 2016 inundated emergency services and hospitals resulting in over 8000 hospital admissions by 6 pm of that day.

Significance of the New Tool

  • Dr Aditya Joshi, Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO’s Data61, explained that a key challenge in the case of acute disease events is to detect them as soon as possible to assist health agencies.
  • This will help them respond swiftly in emergency situations.
  • He noted that the popularity of social media makes it a valuable source of information for epidemic intelligence.
  • The researchers have developed a technique, which was able to detect the disease outbreak up to nine hours before it was officially reported and before the first news story broke.
  • They can draw upon informal sources such as social media data to understand how acute disease events occur.
  • They can then detect when and where an outbreak is likely to occur. This means hospitals and public health agencies can be as prepared as possible.

How it Works

  • Using anonymised and publicly available Twitter data, the tool analysed more than 3 million tweets containing keywords related to asthma such as “breath” and “coughing”.
  • The technique combines two fields of artificial intelligence (AI), which are natural language processing and statistical time series modelling, and a four-step process.
  • This will ensure the tweets containing the keywords were indeed reports of health conditions as well as to remove duplicates where an individual might tweet more than once about their condition.
  • Natural language processing, or NLP, is the ability of a computer program to process human language.
  • The tool uses NLP based on word embeddings in order to distinguish between symptoms and unrelated mentions of the keywords.

Benefits of the New Tool

Professor Raina MacIntyre, Head of Biosecurity Research Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney shared how this work is a remarkable contribution to public health research.

This system can be used in the future to provide health authorities and the community early warning of a serious and sudden health event.

Early detection could significantly improve the capability to mitigate the impact of epidemics. The tool can be used to detect other outbreaks such as Influenza, Ebola and the Zika virus.

It draws on Data61’s Emergency Situation Awareness system, which analyses Twitter messages posted during disasters and crises to support disaster response efforts.

OpenGov Academy

In line with smart nation efforts of encouraging AI technology adoption, OpenGov has launched its OpenGov Academy, in collaboration with AlphaZetta.

The OpenGov Academy facilitates and promotes AI masterclasses, workshops and customised courses that are conducted by AlphaZetta and supported by OpenGov.

This academy will feature masterclasses across various levels: C-suite, management, business, and, expert.

The classes have been created to impart understanding – taught in an intuitive, accessible way, keeping formulae and mathematics to a bare minimum and taking an innate, visual approach.

Data literacy, AI and data science, and strategic decision making with data are some of the classes offered by the academy.

For more information, visit: OpenGov Academy

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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.

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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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