Artificial intelligence has proven to be an important tool in preventing the spread of COVID-19 — at least for Greece. A special algorithm dubbed Eva helped Greek health officials identify high-risk travelers and get them tested.

«It was a very high-impact artificial intelligence project, and I believe we saved lives by developing a cutting edge, novel system for targeted testing during the pandemic,» said Kimon Drakopoulos, a USC Marshall assistant professor of Data Sciences and Operations and one of the study’s authors.

In July 2020, Greece largely reopened its borders to spare its tourism-dependent economy from the devastating impact of long-term shutdowns amid COVID-19.

Greece collaborated with USC Marshall and Wharton to create «Eva,» an artificial intelligence algorithm that uses real-time data to identify high-risk visitors for testing. Evidence shows the algorithm caught nearly twice as many asymptomatic infected travelers as would have been caught if Greece had relied on only travel restrictions and randomized COVID testing.

«Our work with Eva proves that carefully integrating real-time data, artificial intelligence and lean operations offers huge benefits over conventional, widely used approaches to managing the pandemic,» said Vishal Gupta, a USC Marshall associate professor of data science another of the study’s authors.

The joint study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Story Source: Materials provided by University of Southern California. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.