Anticipating Local Disruption in a New Era of Global Epidemics

The COVID-19 pandemic is a clear indication that the world has entered a new era of disruptive epidemics. A confluence of global forces is driving the emergence of dangerous new pathogens, their amplification and dispersion, and inequalities that increase global vulnerability to biological threats, whether arising from naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate events. Preventing or mitigating the health, economic, and social impacts of future biological threats requires earlier detection, rapid assessment, and timely, coordinated cross-sectoral responses. This presentation will focus on the role of global open source and commercial data, integrated machine and human intelligence, and contemporary digital technologies in empowering public and private sector responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these solutions must evolve to strengthen readiness to tomorrow’s inevitable biological threats.

Speaker:

Kamran Khan MD, CEO BlueDot, Toronto

Dr. Kamran Khan is practising infectious disease physician and a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto. Motivated by his experiences as a frontline healthcare worker during the 2003 Toronto SARS outbreak, Dr. Khan has been studying outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging diseases for nearly two decades to lay the scientific foundation for a global early warning system for infectious diseases. His research has been published in scientific journals from the New England Journal of Medicine, to the Lancet, Science, and Nature. Dr. Khan recently received a Governor General’s Award for his work transcending clinical medicine, public health, big data, and artificial intelligence. To translate and disseminate scientific knowledge into timely action, Dr. Khan founded BlueDot in 2013, an infectious disease intelligence company that combines human and artificial intelligence to help governments protect their citizens and businesses protect their employees and customers from dangerous infectious diseases. BlueDot’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic was featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes.