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How a Canadian Company Used AI to Detect the Coronavirus

Disruptors
Disruptors
Episode • Feb 13, 2020 • 39m

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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