This Canadian university is using AI to help combat infectious diseases in 16 countries in the Global South

Jude Kong, York University's associate professor and executive director of the Global South Artificial Intelligence for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness and Response Network (AI4PEP). (Submitted by Jude Kong)

A Canadian university-led program is exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can help improve preparedness for infectious diseases outbreaks in the Global South, thus revolutionizing health care on a global scale.

The program, led by York University in Toronto, merges knowledge from researchers, policy makers and local community experts from around the world to create AI-powered tools tailored to specific countries to reduce the devastating impacts of existing or emerging infectious disease outbreaks.

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The goal is to design health-care solutions based on local data from different sources and to develop and train AI algorithms to address specific needs such as predicting outbreaks in a set region. The initiative encompasses 16 southern projects in total.

“We’re making locally-relevant data actionable to create common policies that are relevant to the local public,” Jude Kong, the program’s executive director told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.

“Our hope is for COVID-19 to never repeat itself.”

The multi-regional network, named Global South Artificial Intelligence for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness and Response Network (AI4PEP), received $7.25 million in funding from the International Development Research Centre last year.

From this funding, more than $5.8 million will be used over the course of five years to enhance locally-led projects in the southern countries.

“The funding lasts five years, but our relationship, our partnership, is eternal,” said Kong.

The York U team received 221 project submissions from 47 countries, which was narrowed down to 16 finalists across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Kong said the team wanted to ensure the projects represented a broad geographical landscape and were linguistically distributed.

The scope of the program ranges from polio surveillance in Ethiopia, to helping Indigenous communities in the Philippines and developing user-friendly platforms to control future disease outbreaks in Brazil.

Each project falls under one of four categories: early detection of diseases, warning systems, response, and mitigation and control of developing epidemics. All depending on the region’s specific needs.

York University's multi-regional program encompasses 16 projects across the Global South (Submitted by Jude Kong)Kong said the initiative will use a decolonizing approach, adding that local knowledge is crucial when creating relevant solutions.

“People sitting in a university environment think they know better what the problem is in (other) communities, but no,” he said.

“Something that’s working in London will not necessarily work in Ghana or in the interior of the Philippines.”

Each of the 16 projects has a team of data scientists, epidemiologists, physicists, mathematicians, software engineers, as well as clinical public health, emergency management and community engagement experts who meet on a bi-weekly basis. These teams also meet on a regional basis to share key findings and talk about shared commonalities. Stakeholders also meet monthly for cross-regional communication.

As the network program continues to evolve, Kong said some countries whose projects were not chosen for funding are still involved in the process by participating in York U’s lecture series.

“They continue to get involved in the network in other aspects, even though their proposal was not chosen. It shows that passion to improve health-care systems,” he said.