In an insightful interview with Future News held on Monday, March 25th, 2024, Augustine Narokwe, a visionary public health professional and data scientist, shared groundbreaking perspectives on leveraging data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to transform disease surveillance and genomic analysis across the African continent.
The interview, moderated by Victor Ogheneyoma, delved into Narokwe’s unique approach of integrating data science into public health initiatives, a field traditionally reliant on manual processes and individual expertise.
Drawing from his multidisciplinary background, Narokwe highlighted the power of machine learning algorithms in enabling early detection of disease outbreaks through social media monitoring and syndromic surveillance. By harnessing natural language processing techniques, his methods can efficiently sift through vast amounts of social media data, identifying potential outbreak signals from individuals’ shared experiences and symptoms.”
Social media is crucial for event-based surveillance,” Narokwe explained. “We can automate the monitoring of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, analyzing posts based on relevant keywords to enable early alerting to authorities, a process often done manually by health practitioners.”
Furthermore, Narokwe discussed the role of deep learning, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), in enhancing syndromic surveillance and differentiating diseases with similar symptoms. These advanced AI models can analyze medical images, such as X-rays, and classify syndromes or illnesses based on learned patterns from labeled training data.”
Deep learning assumes the complexity of the human brain through neural networks,” Narokwe stated. “CNNs can break down medical images, learn the specific features associated with each diagnosis, and predict the illness in new, unlabeled images by matching these learned patterns.”
Throughout the interview, Narokwe emphasized the transformative potential of data science in providing effective, data-driven public health interventions and decision-making. By integrating these cutting-edge techniques into traditional disease surveillance methods, health authorities can gain crucial insights and respond more proactively to emerging threats.
As the coordinator of the Actuate Biomedical Knowledge Translation in Africa Project and a leader at Future News and TAFFD’s Kenyan Market, Narokwe is at the forefront of leveraging technology to drive advancements in biomedicine and address global health challenges across the African region.
The interview not only shed light on the innovative applications of data science but also underscored the pressing need for collaboration between public health experts, data scientists, and policymakers to harness the full potential of these emerging technologies for the betterment of population health.
Written and compiled by William Etete Daxon and Victor Ogheneyoma
