Clalit will join European AI research project tackling pandemics after COVID

Clalit Health Services, Israel's largest HMO, has decided that the best time to prepare for the next pandemic is right after the last one ended. They're joining a European Union research project to develop AI that predicts and manages future outbreaks, partnering with the World Health Organization and Oxford University. Yes, the same WHO that spent weeks debating whether COVID-19 was a 'public health emergency of international concern' while the virus was already having a party in Italy. The EU, meanwhile, is a gleaming beacon of fast, decisive action, as we all recall from the vaccine rollout fiasco.

The project promises an AI-powered early warning system. Because if there's one thing the first pandemic didn't have, it was early warnings. Dr. Anthony Fauci tweeted about it on January 30, 2020, but who reads tweets from immunologists? The AI will presumably scan Twitter for that. The partnership with Oxford adds academic heft, because nothing says 'trust us' like a university that's really good at tests but couldn't get its own staff a pay rise.

Of course, this AI will be trained on Clalit's massive dataset of patient records, which is wonderful news for privacy advocates. But let's not be cynical: maybe this time the AI will actually detect a novel pathogen before it kills a million people. Maybe it will even suggest a lockdown that the WHO immediately endorses. Either way, it's a fine use of EU research funds. The next pandemic is coming; at least we'll have an AI to tell us it's coming while it's already here.