Covid –19: Microsoft pushes ‘AI for Health’ initiative with $20 million

The firm states it is focussing on efforts on certain sectors (data, analysis and the skills of data scientists) that it thinks will play a major role in making the change.

The firm states it is focussing on efforts on certain sectors (data, analysis and the skills of data scientists) that it thinks will play a major role in making the change. (Reuters)

In a big to fight Covid-19 and help those on the front lines, Microsoft has announced that it will dedicate $20 million to its 'AI for Health' initiative "to advance the health of people and communities around the world." The initiative was introduced by the Redmond-based tech giant earlier this year. The firm states it is focussing on efforts on certain sectors (data, analysis and the skills of data scientists) that it thinks will play a major role in making the change.

Microsoft says its focus will be on:

-Data and insights to inform for people's safety and economic impacts.

-Treatment and diagnostics, enabling research to further the development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.

-Allocation of resources, including recommendations on the allocation of limited assets, such as hospital space and medical supplies.

-Dissemination of accurate information to minimize misinformation sharing.

-Scientific research to study and understand COVID-19.

The company has also made some partnerships as well. One of the major partnerships is that the firm is helping researchers at COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium with powerful computing resources, which can speed-up the scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus. "Around the world, Microsoft's research scientists, spanning computer science, biology, medicine and public health, are collaborating on projects in the consortium," says Microsoft.

All this comes while the company works on different front as well, giving end users the ease of working from home. Microsoft has not only announced three-months paid parental leave for its workers but has also launched a coronavirus tracker on Bing. The tracker is available as a part of the company's Bing products and it gives details about the active and recovered cases of coronavirus country wise.