Future of Drug Discovery: The Synergy of Edge Computing, Internet of Medical Things, and Deep Learning

The global spread of COVID-19 highlights the urgency of quickly finding drugs and vaccines and suggests that similar challenges will arise in the future. This underscores the need for ongoing efforts to overcome the obstacles involved in the development of potential treatments. Although some progress has been made in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in drug discovery, virologists, pharmaceutical companies, and investors seek more long-term solutions and greater investment in emerging technologies. One potential solution to aid in the drug-development process is to combine the capabilities of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), edge computing (EC), and deep learning (DL). Some practical frameworks and techniques utilizing EC, IoMT, and DL have been proposed for the monitoring and tracking of infected individuals or high-risk areas. However, these technologies have not been widely utilized in drug clinical trials. Given the time-consuming nature of traditional drug- and vaccine-development methods, there is a need for a new AI-based platform that can revolutionize the industry. One approach involves utilizing smartphones equipped with medical sensors to collect and transmit real-time physiological and healthcare information on clinical-trial participants to the nearest edge nodes (EN). This allows the verification of a vast amount of medical data for a large number of individuals in a short time frame, without the restrictions of latency, bandwidth, or security constraints. The collected information can be monitored by physicians and researchers to assess a vaccine's performance.

Automated summary

The global spread of COVID-19 highlights the urgent need for drugs and vaccines, emphasizing the importance of overcoming the obstacles in drug development. While progress has been made in using AI, virologists, pharmaceutical companies, and investors seek long-term solutions and greater investment in emerging technologies. One potential solution involves combining IoMT, EC, and DL to aid in the drug-development process and monitor infected individuals or high-risk areas. However, these technologies have not been widely utilized in drug clinical trials. A new AI-based platform utilizing smartphones equipped with medical sensors can revolutionize the industry by collecting real-time physiological and healthcare information for efficient assessment of vaccine performance.