Applications of artificial intelligence in COVID-19 pandemic: A comprehensive review

Muzammil Khan; Muhammad Taqi Mehran; Zeeshan Ul Haq; Zahid Ullah; Salman Raza Naqvi; Mehreen Ihsan; Haider Abbass

doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115695

Applications of artificial intelligence in COVID-19 pandemic: A comprehensive review

Expert Syst Appl. 2021 Dec 15:185:115695. doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115695. Epub 2021 Aug 4.

Authors

Muzammil Khan¹, Muhammad Taqi Mehran¹, Zeeshan Ul Haq¹, Zahid Ullah¹, Salman Raza Naqvi¹, Mehreen Ihsan², Haider Abbass³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, H-12, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
² Peshawar Medical College, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 25000, Pakistan.
³ National Cyber Security Auditing and Evaluation LAb, National University of Sciences & Technology, MCS Campus, Rawalpindi 43600, Pakistan.

Abstract

During the current global public health emergency caused by novel coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19), researchers and medical experts started working day and night to search for new technologies to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent studies have shown that artificial intelligence (AI) has been successfully employed in the health sector for various healthcare procedures. This study comprehensively reviewed the research and development on state-of-the-art applications of artificial intelligence for combating the COVID-19 pandemic. In the process of literature retrieval, the relevant literature from citation databases including ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and Preprints from arXiv, medRxiv, and bioRxiv was selected. Recent advances in the field of AI-based technologies are critically reviewed and summarized. Various challenges associated with the use of these technologies are highlighted and based on updated studies and critical analysis, research gaps and future recommendations are identified and discussed. The comparison between various machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methods, the dominant AI-based technique, mostly used ML and DL methods for COVID-19 detection, diagnosis, screening, classification, drug repurposing, prediction, and forecasting, and insights about where the current research is heading are highlighted. Recent research and development in the field of artificial intelligence has greatly improved the COVID-19 screening, diagnostics, and prediction and results in better scale-up, timely response, most reliable, and efficient outcomes, and sometimes outperforms humans in certain healthcare tasks. This review article will help researchers, healthcare institutes and organizations, government officials, and policymakers with new insights into how AI can control the COVID-19 pandemic and drive more research and studies for mitigating the COVID-19 outbreak.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; COVID-19; Deep learning; Drug repurposing; Machine learning; SARS-CoV-2.

Publication types

Review