We know disease exists, where it comes from and how it evolves - but we don’t yet know ahead of time when something changes to mark the start of a new disease, a new variant or just an increase in transmission.
Often reports and reflection on major events will talk about key points in time where ‘intervention’ or specifically ‘earlier intervention’ could have happened to change outcomes. In respect of Covid-19, there are many, some debatable, points in time where as a collective, nations, governments, health professionals, scientists and data experts could have made earlier interventions to reduce the spread of the virus and ultimately save lives.
But that’s the challenge in itself. Without knowing when a disease is going to spread among the population, we are already on the back foot and playing catch-up to get ahead of what is often an incredibly complex and rapidly changing situation. This is where the world's health professionals and data scientists want to move from intervention to prevention -and why so many clinicians are now relying increasingly on digital health analytics and AI.