The COVID-19 Pandemic and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications in Health: How Much Are We Interested in?

Abstract

Objective New viruses have emerged, causing global damage and mass deaths that can spread to international borders, the latest of which is the new coronavirus (COVID-19). After the Second International Congress on Artificial Intelligence in Health, themed "Artificial Intelligence in Health During COVID-19 Pandemic Process" organized online by İzmir Bakırçay University and İzmir Provincial Health Directorate with the contributions of the International Association of Artificial Intelligence in Health, a questionnaire was conducted to evaluate the knowledge of the participants about artificial intelligence applications. 
 Materials and Methods: This study aimed to evaluate the interest of the congress participants in this field with the questions which form the questionnaire such as the duration of the interest of the participants in the field of artificial intelligence in health, their publication status, the development of studies on artificial intelligence with the COVID-19 pandemic, demographic structures such as age and gender, and educational level. 130 participants answered the questionnaire consisting of 23 questions. Questionnaire responses were analyzed in a statistical setting. 
 Results: We found that 130 people filled out the questionnaire and the majority of the participants were female, with participation from many organizations, but university staff showed more interest. We have seen that the 30-39 age group is more interested in artificial intelligence than the other age groups, but the majority of the participants do not have academic studies in this field. We found that the technical terms related to artificial intelligence were not well known by the participants, and that the number of participants who tended to this field, especially in the recent year, was high. Another important point was that people working in this field stated that they would definitely follow up if scientific activities continued.
 Conclusion: We know how important congresses, symposiums, courses and other meetings are, especially for scientist candidates, which will be held to raise awareness about the usage areas of artificial intelligence-based health technologies, to develop new communication and work networks by bringing together different disciplines, to create an agenda and to lay the groundwork for new studies, and we think that there is a need for many repetitive activities in this field and that these activities should be continued.