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AI’S ROLE IN THE COVID VACCINATION PROCESS

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Since its inception, artificial intelligence has represented a great hope for medical research. Once taught, AI can simply perform complex and repetitive tasks much faster than humans can. It filters information and recognizes patterns much better than the vast majority of us can. COVID-19 has presented the challenge that is putting to the test how much our current level of AI can aid in medical breakthroughs. First, it was used to help develop vaccines. Now, it’s helping to get vaccines into arms safely.

SIDE EFFECTS

In the UK, the government has contracted software company Genpact UK to develop AI to process people’s adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines. While approved vaccines have undergone lengthy, multistage clinical trials and have been deemed safe by accredited doctors, there are side effects to any drug. There is always a small percentage of people who have negative physical reactions to shots, and governments are planning to vaccinate literally billions of people before the year is out. Not everything will go perfectly.

As a Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority spokesperson told Healthcare IT News, ““Our past experience with other new immunization campaigns is that we tend to receive around 1 Yellow Card report per 1,000 doses administered and we are preparing our surveillance systems on that basis.