How One Company Used AI to Detect the Coronavirus
By
John Stackhouse
Published February 24, 2020
|
2 min read
On New Year’s Eve, BlueDot—a Toronto technology company aiming to fight epidemics using AI—saw something concerning. By the next day, BlueDot had alerted its clients of the possible outbreak of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China—days before the World Health Organization. On the latest RBC Disruptors podcast, John Stackhouse sits down Kamran Khan, one of the world’s top virus-chasers, to discuss how he sounded the alarm on the coronavirus using a blend of artificial intelligence, medical expertise and human instinct.
On RBC Disruptors, meet Dr. Kamran Khan, a Canadian physician and entrepreneur using AI and Big Data to create an early-warning system for infectious diseases. Khan and John Stackhouse discuss:
- How BlueDot’s early warning system detected the 2020 coronavirus ahead of everyone else
- Why Canada is a challenging environment for healthcare innovation
- How societies struggle in 2020 to contain infectious diseases despite a wave of new technologies
Sign up for the RBC Disruptors email newsletter at rbc.com/disruptors.
John Stackhouse
Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO, Royal Bank of Canada
As Senior Vice-President, Office of the CEO, John advises the executive leadership on emerging trends in Canada’s economy, providing insights grounded in his travels across the country and around the world. His work focuses on technological change and innovation, examining how to successfully navigate the new economy so more people can thrive in the age of disruption.
Prior to joining RBC, John spent nearly 25 years at the Globe and Mail, where he served as editor-in-chief, editor of Report on Business, and a foreign correspondent in New Delhi, India. Having interviewed a range of prominent world leaders and figures, including Vladimir Putin, Kofi Annan, and Benazir Bhutto, he possesses a deep understanding of national and international affairs.
In the community, John serves as a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, the C.D. Howe Institute and on the boards of Saint Elizabeth Health Care and the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada.
John is the author of three books: Out of Poverty, Timbit Nation, and Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution. He is currently working on his fourth, about Canada’s global population in an age of nationalism.
AIBig DataCOVID-19CoronavirusHealthcareInnovationTechnology
