Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics: Can Artificial Intelligence Help Future Global Challenges? An Overview of Antimicrobial Resistance and Impact of Climate Change in Disease Epidemiology

Abstract

Objectives: To provide an oveiview of the current application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of public health and epidemiology, with a special focus on antimicrobial resistance and the impact of climate change in disease epidemiology. Both topics are of vital importance and were included in the “Ten threats to global health in 2019“ report published by the World Health Organization. Methods: We analysed publications that appeared in the last two years, between January 2017 and October 2018. Papers were searched using Google Scholar with the following keywords: public health, epidemiology, machine learning, data analytics, artificial intelligence, disease surveillance, climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and combinations thereof. Selected articles were organised by theme. Results: In spite of a large interest in AI generated both within and outside the scientific community, and of the many opinions pointing towards the importance of a better use of data in public health, few papers have been published on the selected topics in the last two years. We identify several potential reasons, including the complexity of the integration of heterogeneous data, and the lack of sound and unbiased validation procedures. Conclusions: As there is a better comprehension of AI and more funding available, artificial intelligence will become not only the centre of attention in informatics, but more importantly the source of innovative solutions for public health.

Usage of Artificial Intelligence in Public Health

“…İnsanın farkında bile olmadan sahip olduğu yeteneklerin makineye tek tek tanıtılması gerekmektedir. Yapay zekaya olan büyük ilgiye ve verilerin Halk Sağlığında daha iyi kullanılmasının önemine işaret eden birçok düşünceye rağmen, heterojen verilerin entegrasyonunun karmaşıklığı ve sağlam ve tarafsız doğrulama prosedürlerinin eksikliği de dahil olmak üzere çeşitli potansiyel sorunlar bulunmaktadır 43 . Veri sistemleriyle ilgili öncelikli amaç, sistemlerin homojenleştirilmesi yönünde olmalıdır.…”

Antimicrobial stewardship programs; a two-part narrative review of step-wise design and issues of controversy Part I: step-wise design of an antimicrobial stewardship program

“…Three recent, excellent reviews have also defined pressing research need within the field. 45,178,190 It is likely that novel scientific findings, for instance regarding the complex dynamic between use and resistance, 191–194 and the application of clinical support systems in treatment decisions based on artificial intelligence, 195–197 will affect the way we perform antimicrobial stewardship in the not so distant future. It is clear that antimicrobial stewardship has come a long way since the start more than 20 years ago, but also clear that a combination of globally coordinated and locally adjusted efforts are needed to achieve even better impact.…”

The Internet of Things for Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance

“…Security and privacy issues regarding IoT and healthcare applications should not be forgotten, and though not specifically aimed at IoT for AMR, such issues are essential for promoting the use and trust in IoT in general. These issues include: 1) emphasizing built-in security solutions and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) considerations [16], 2) future-proofing devices to meet the security challenges of tomorrow, 3) access control and device authentication, 4) reducing the amount of personal data collected by IoT devices and 5) rendering compromised data useless without destroying the IoT infrastructure [17]. Of course, such issues may be amplified if data from AMR IoT devices is being collected from (inter) national networks and being scrutinized by artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) systems [18].…”