Over the past decade, vaccination development has been accelerated tremendously with the help of advanced machine learning.
(Informative Essay)
"The coming era of Artificial Intelligence will not be the era of war, but be the era of deep compassion, non-violence, and love.” ~Amit Ray, Pioneer of Compassionate AI Movement
Vaccine development can be long and strenuous, due to the complexities of the human immune system and diversity among populations. Taking many years to find the right chemicals and components that can work together to make a change, COVID-19 is not the first disease to take the United States by storm in recent memory as so did Polio. It took almost 50 years to develop a vaccine for this rampant virus. However, there is a major difference in the technology that we have available to us now when looking at the development of vaccines. Recent advances in artificial intelligence are showing increasing promise in the race of making vaccines that would be helpful in society to combat COVID-19.
Developmental Process
The first step to developing an efficacious vaccine is to understand the benefits and side effects of each method in order to provide citizens with the safest and most effective vaccine possible. In older forms, vaccines were composed of dead viral strains that contained inactive components. This greatly helped weaken the and destroy the symptoms of viruses. Medicine has now shifted away from this all-inclusive method to a more selective process that strives to get the best response from the immune system possible while using only the components that are necessary.
Suchi Saria, a leader in the Machine Learning and Health Care Lab, says that “AI is a powerful catalyst.” When explaining how Machine Learning works when trying to create a vaccine Saria explains that it draws insight by combining data from multiple experimental and real-world sources. This is really convenient to the researchers since these data sets are often challenging to grasp without the help of AI, allowing scientists to be more efficient in creating vaccines..
Finding these components is where artificial intelligence begins to shine as they are able to identify proteins to include in potential vaccines. Scientists and researchers are then equipped to project which proteins will prompt a successful immune response. The protein combinations that Machine Learning was able to find have helped humans greatly as we don’t have the insight to spot these things with the human eye.
This past year in January artificial intelligence was put to the test as Google DeepMind instituted AlphaFold, which is a system that predicts the structure of a protein based on the genetic makeup. Later in March, when the system was used on COVID-19, the computer was able to come up with serval predictions that would be useful in development.
When making the predictions that would be vital to the success of the development of the vaccine. The machine was able to make and identify two COVID-19 proteins, including SARS-CoV-2 membrane protein, Nsp2, Nsp4, Nsp6, Papainlike proteinase, and ORF3a. Out of the six the most promising one is Nsp6 as UC Berkeley has also done experiments with this protein when seeing which protein would be most efficient.
Rollout of Vaccine
One of the biggest challenges that we are going to face with the development of vaccines is the rollout of it and managing the supply chains. When looking at data strategy, artificial intelligence can solve the rollout problem why finding out where people want the vaccine, when they want to get it, and who needs it the most. The machines are then able to give the pharmacies a picture of what they should have in stock and in what communities that they should give it to. Based on whether the community is eager to be vaccinated and underserved communities that were hit.
Outside of developing the vaccine artificial intelligence has also been able to come up with algorithms and models to distribute the vaccine. Coming up and identifying which individuals are at the most risk. Sanford chief physician Dr.Jeremy Cauwels states "With those 85,000 people what we can do is take a real-time picture that evolves over time, using computer learning to tell us what patients or what people in the Midwest get the sickest form COVID-19"
Minnesota could have used rolled out the vaccines to random areas, however, it is important that we help those that are in need the most first. This is why alone is showing the impact that artificial intelligence is already having on those around the nation.
Artificial intelligence is just beginning to scratch the surface of what is able of when pertaining to the medical world. As the possibilities are endless, with Corona virtually taking over the world scientists are researchers were able to fight back against this deadly virus. Machine learning might even have the capability to cure viruses that we wouldn’t have been able to before with machine learning.