White House Unveils Digital Database for Coronavirus Research

Naomi Nix (Bloomberg) -- The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Monday unveiled a new database with thousands of scientific articles about the coronavirus in an effort to help public health experts combat the worsening pandemic.

U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Krastios told reporters that the new database is a “call to action” for tech companies to use artificial intelligence to mine the research to answer important questions about the virus.

The new database, which already has some 29,000 scholarly articles, is the latest effort by tech companies and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to coordinate a response to the health crisis.

Last week, Krastios led a call with Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. to discuss how tech platforms can combat misinformation about the virus and products on the internet.

Eric Horvitz, Microsoft’s chief scientific officer, said the database will help scientists stay on top of “thousands of articles.”

Other groups working on the effort include the Allen Institute for AI, a research organization started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropy group created by Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

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