How a Canadian Company Used AI to Detect the Coronavirus

Published: Feb. 13, 2020, 11:05 p.m.

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 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

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