Network Medicine in the Fight Against COVID-19

COVID-19 forced stakeholders in the healthcare landscape to adopt a new perspective in this sphere. Telemedicine rose to fame as a ready-made solution; artificial intelligence’s contribution became more apparent from early outbreak predictions to resource management; and digital health technologies lent a helping hand early on.

Another promising area joining the fight is network medicine, a branch of network science. The latter field studies the interaction between actors within a network. Such analyses are applicable to virtually any sector, from the world wide web through social networks to how molecules interact with each other. Applying such theories to human biology yields network medicine; the study of biological networks to better understand and help treat diseases.