CAST's UN consultation experts support anti-epidemic battle with digital technologies
The outbreak of covid-19 is a global public health event that threatens and challenges all human beings.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the UN consultation experts of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) have been using their expertise to build a digital system of epidemic knowledge and data information.
On January 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the epidemic a public health emergency of international concern. The United Nations (UN) consultation experts of CAST responded quickly. At the proposal of professor Liu Chuang, an expert under the CAST Consultative Committee on UN Information Technology (CCIT) and under the coordination and leadership of committee chair Gong Ke, the committee began to work with the CAST UN Consultative Committee on Life Sciences and Human Health (CCLH) to promote the establishment of a system on COVID-19 knowledge and data information, using digital technologies like big data and AI. The system is expected to support the anti-epidemic battle by providing advice to decision makers. The two committees have had many conference calls on the matter.
With concerted efforts, a private beta of the system came out with 57 articles on February 5. To serve China’s needs in fighting the epidemic, the system focuses on collecting information on the progress made abroad, especially in the R&D of medicines and vaccines as well as quarantine measures.
CCLH keeps communication with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), reporting the system’s progress and inquiring about the needs of medical sector. It also communicates with the center about data model and usefulness. China CDC experts spoke highly of the system.
As of February 15, the system has indexed 381 articles, 28 scientific data clusters, and a raster data set on the daily forecast of the basic meteorological factors in the near-surface air in China for the winter and spring of 2020 including temperature, precipitation, air pressure, wind speed and COVID-19-related factors. The data set contains 53 papers and 17 scientific data from the WHO.
The system is still under construction. The central government encourages efforts to use big data, AI and cloud computing technologies to monitor and analyze the COVID-19 epidemic, trace the source of the virus, prevent and control the epidemic, treat patients, and deploy resources. Improvement to the system will be made continually according to the findings and feedbacks in its operation.
