Scientists around the world are working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. But if one is found, public health officials will face a number of tough decisions, including deciding who gets it first.

CTV News quoted University of Guelph math professor Daniel Ashlock in a story on the subject. Ashlock is helping to develop an artificial intelligence model that could provide guidance on how best to deploy vaccines.

“Knowing who, how and where to vaccine first is critically important to mitigating the spread of the virus,”  said Ashlock in the article.

For example the tool could be used to determine whether vaccinating grocery store workers or vulnerable populations will have a greater effect on public health, he added

The AI model will take a collection of vaccine or diagnostic test deployment strategies and use simulations to select the most effective strategy based on current information, such as the number of tests available. This tool will ultimately be housed on a cloud server called Github, and be made freely available to decision-makers such as public health managers.