Dr Ismaël Koné is CEPR’s new Pershing Square Foundation Data Science Fellow based at the MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM. He is conducting research focused on African countries, using existing clinical and surveillance data about previous invasive bacterial diseases caused by meningitis, influenza and pneumonia outbreaks across the continent. His aim is to develop data science techniques and AI tools that will enable researchers to forecast future case numbers and understand the driving factors behind the spread of the diseases.

The Fellowship provides the opportunity for an early career researcher to obtain essential experience in areas of infectious disease research, outbreak response and management, leadership and health policy. The programme also supports awardees to gain new practical expertise in their chosen field, by undertaking research projects and providing teaching and training oversight to students.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and other scientific studies have found that meningitis caused 290,000 deaths globally and the loss of 20 million years of healthy life due to meningitis related mortality and disability in 2017. The WHO has also highlighted that the “meningitis belt” of sub-Saharan Africa, has the highest prevalence of bacterial meningitis in the world. Ultimately, Dr Koné hopes his AI models will help drive policy decisions to prevent disease spread, by ensuring public health interventions are targeted and effective across the continent.

Dr Koné first became interested in how data science and the associated AI tools could be used to better human health and wellbeing during his Master’s degree. During his PhD, he worked on building an automated breast cancer diagnosis system using AI to recognise cancer by showing it thousands of breast cancer screening images. The aim was to reduce errors and the time needed to analyse biopsy results. In fact, before starting his Fellowship, Dr Koné was an Assistant Professor of artificial intelligence and data science at the Virtual University of Côte d’Ivoire, teaching Deep Learning techniques for computer vision and natural language processing - the underlying technology of ChatGPT. Now, thanks to his Fellowship, he has turned his focus to epidemic preparedness and response.

In Dr Koné’s view, preparing for the next pandemic is even more acute given the devastating effects of COVID-19 and how the disease spread so rapidly in a highly interconnected world. It affected every part of human life; from physical and mental health, social wellbeing to economic prospects and therefore, getting ready for something similar is a must - society has no choice. This is where the power of data science and AI steps in, according to Dr Koné, as these tools allow researchers to use the wealth of existing data from COVID-19 and other historical epidemics to better understand the fundamentals of disease spread and the driving factors behind them. These can then be applied to address new unknown infectious disease outbreaks more effectively.

He highlights that, although disease transmission is complex and multi-faceted, the power of data science and AI means that it is becoming possible for researchers to build a truly holistic picture of infectious diseases. Using models and techniques that work with several different data types, from clinical, genomic, and climate data, to human behaviour information gathered from social media, AI can fuse and analyse these data sources seamlessly. Thus, potentially saving time, resources and ultimately lives when responding to unknown disease outbreaks.  

By using African expertise, data and infrastructure, Dr Koné hopes his research will lead to data science and AI tools that can be deployed on a continent-wide basis should they be required – preparing for future pandemics across the African continent. Similarly, he feels that by proving the tools in the African context, they can ultimately be scaled up to other countries in need, particularly those currently lacking the required data science and AI funding and infrastructure.

Dr Koné said: “The subject of the Fellowship lies in my interests and the opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary environment is unique, given the large array of subject matter experts from both mathematical modelling and biological scientist. I feel lucky to be in such a vibrant community of researchers trying to push the boundaries of science legacy to improve human life globally. Hopefully, I’ll become senior enough be able to conduct my own independent research with high standards of excellence.”

In terms of his current research project, Dr Koné is still getting underway, with the next steps being to build an AI model using the existing invasive bacterial disease surveillance data caused by meningitis, influenza and pneumonia before rigorous further testing.