Tainan City Government has been continuously looking for innovative intelligent technologies to control and prevent dengue fever. The city recently launched Taiwan's very first AI Dengue Fever Prevention Platform to safeguard public health and safety. The AI image recognition model technology on the platform can identify vector mosquito larvae with a 95% accuracy, which allows responsible government agencies to implement dengue fever prevention measures early on. This is the first successful deployment of AI technology in dengue fever prevention in Taiwan and has reinforced the arsenal of Taiwan's epidemic prevention technologies.
Tainan City Mayor Huang Wei-che remarked that with the support of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Industrial Development Bureau, Tainan City Government teamed up with Microsoft Taiwan, Wistron, and Linker Networks to bring dengue fever prevention technology to a new level. Compared with traditional manual processing methods, AI technology has a higher accuracy and shorter identification time. The Mayor also expressed that he expects to see more AI solutions and technical talents in the field henceforth to help speed up digital transformation in industries and transform Tainan into a new-gen smart city which implements AI in its city governance.
According to statistics from the Dengue Fever Prevention Center, a total of 3,252 oviposition traps were placed in hotspot areas during vector mosquito plateau periods. The layout produced 6,504 sheets of oviposition papers, and sampling and counting the eggs on each sheet requires about ten minutes. In other words, this vector monitoring method requires a large amount of labor and time, and may not be very accurate.
The AI Dengue Fever Prevention Platform, on the other hand, can analyze larvae and egg images and determine their numbers with 95% accuracy. The technology is estimated to cut down at least 50% of current processing time, releasing extra time and labor which can be deployed to expand quarantine areas and provide more comprehensive protection. We hope that Tainan will have the opportunity to share our epidemic prevention technology and experiences with other cities and counties, and export our dengue fever prevention solutions.