The event of signing the letter of intent between the University of Peradeniya and the Ministry of Health, to collaborate on the research project entitled "An Artificial Intelligence framework for threat assessment and containment for COVID-19 and future epidemics while mitigating the socio-economic impact to women, children, and underprivileged groups", dubbed COVID-AI Project, took place on 18th of December 2021 at the Heritance Kanadalama, Dambulla. The event was graced by the Director General of Health Services,Dr. Asela Gunawardena ; the Vice Chancellor of the University of Peradeniya, Prof.M.D.Lamawansa and all the project investigators from the disciplines of Engineering, Social Sciences and Medicine. The broad objectives of this letter of intent are to promote data exchange and initiate collaborative activities for Al tool development for the prediction and management of a future spread of COVID - 19 or similar infectious disease outbreaks. The collaboration between UoP and MoH initiated the following:
• Data exchange for the purpose of developing Al tools (the anonymity and confidentiality of the data will be ensured end-to-end of the research)
• Open up agreed number of MoH officers to participate in all the project related workshops and training programmes
• Share all the analytics tools developed under the project with MoH to use during and after completion of the project
• Initiate joint publications and acknowledge MoH for any publications that uses the data provided by MoH
• Undertake future research to further improve the Al tools developed