Black swan events like the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to stress public health infrastructures and civic systems to the point of collapse. Two techniques can be applied to curb the spread of a virus: prevention/cure - medical solutions driven by vaccines (prevention), and therapeutics (cure) and mitigation - arresting spread through human behavior, such as practicing hygiene and social isolation/distancing. Historically the approach to mitigating virus spread has been “contact tracing”, but with the speed and scale of this pandemic, it is hard, if not, impossible to adequately map the spread in this way.
Anindya Datta, founder, CEO, and chairman of Mobilewalla, shares his thoughts with The Quint on how using data and artificial intelligence is a more effective option to manage the spread of COVID-19.
Anindya Datta is a leading technologist and innovator with core contributions in best-in-class large-scale data management solutions, artificial intelligence and internet technologies. As Founder, CEO and Chairman of Mobilewalla, Anindya has combined the industry’s most robust data set with deep artificial intelligence and data science expertise to help enterprises better understand, model and predict consumer behavior. Prior to Mobilewalla, Anindya founded Chutney Technologies which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2005. He has been on the faculties of major research universities and institutes in the United States and abroad, including the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, National University of Singapore, and Bell Laboratories. Anindya obtained his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, he resides in Atlanta.
The Quint is an English and Hindi language Indian news website founded by Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur. The Quint tells stories no one else is willing to tell. Millennials are defined by a hunger to know and have it all, and that's what The Quint strives to appease through its unbiased looking glass. In the process, it constantly questions status quo, sparking relevant conversations along the way.
