Abstract
COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), spread rapidly and affected most of the world since its outbreak in Wuhan, China, which presents a major challenge to the emergency response mechanism for sudden public health events and epidemic prevention and control in all countries. In the face of the severe situation of epidemic prevention and control and the arduous task of social management, the tremendous power of science and technology in prevention and control has emerged. The new generation of information technology, represented by big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, has been widely used in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of COVID-19 as an important basic support. Although the technology has developed, there are still challenges with respect to epidemic surveillance, accurate prevention and control, effective diagnosis and treatment, and timely judgement. The prevention and control of sudden infectious diseases usually depend on the control of infection sources, interruption of transmission channels and vaccine development. Big data and AI are effective technologies to identify the source of infection and have an irreplaceable role in distinguishing close contacts and suspicious populations. Advanced computational analysis is beneficial to accelerate the speed of vaccine research and development and to improve the quality of vaccines. AI provides support in automatically processing relevant data from medical images and clinical features, tests and examination findings; predicting disease progression and prognosis; and even recommending treatment plans and strategies. This paper reviews the application of big data and AI in the COVID-19 prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management decisions in China to explain how to apply big data and AI technology to address the common problems in the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the findings regarding the application of big data and AI technologies in sudden public health events lack validation of repeatability and universality, current studies in China have shown that the application of big data and AI is feasible in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These studies concluded that the application of big data and AI technology can contribute to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management decision making regarding sudden public health events in the future.
Highlights
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) is raging throughout the world
The findings regarding the application of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in sudden public health events lack validation of repeatability and universality, ongoing and completed studies in China have shown that the application of big data and AI is feasible in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
We summarized the application of big data and AI technology in different domains with efforts made in China, aiming to provide a reference for prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management decision making regarding sudden public health events in the future (Fig. 1)
Summary
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) is raging throughout the world. Data integration and intelligent analysis through the big data platform can be used to distinguish whether an individual is a COVID19-infected patient, close contact, fellow traveller without close contact, person registered in a fever clinic or person with normal health condition, and two-dimensional health code images with three different possible colours (red, yellow and green) are generated, to divide all of the floating population into three categories (Fig. 2), which is convenient for governments at all levels, institutions and communities to take corresponding prevention, control and management measures [14, 15]. At the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, the TCM field responded to the call of the Chinese government, [38] thoroughly investigated the epidemic area of Wuhan and explored the TCM regimen for clinical diagnosis and treatment and communitybased prevention and control in response to new and sudden infectious diseases [39–42]. The development of big data and AI will certainly be beyond the imagination of humankind [121]
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