Covid-19: Hospitals Deploy AI To Diagnose It

Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, is at the heart of the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that has shut down cities in China, as well as Iran, Italy, and South Korea. That’s forced the hospital to become a test bed for how quickly a modern medical center can adapt to a new infectious disease epidemic.

For this reason, in one experiment is underway in Zhongnan’s radiology department, where staff are using artificial intelligence software to detect visual signs of the pneumonia associated with Covid-19 on images from lung CT scans.

Detecting pneumonia doesn't necessarily mean that a person has the disease, but Haibo Xu, professor and chair radiology at Zhongnan Hospital, says that can help staff diagnose positive case faster, and so isolate and treat patients quickly. 

The software in use at Zhongnan was created by Beijing startup Infervision, an AI high-tech company that uses deep learning technology and computer vision to help diagnose cancer, which says its Covid-19 tool has been deployed at 34 hospitals in China and used to review more than 32,000 cases. The startup, founded in 2015 with funding from investors including early Google backer Sequoia Capital, is an example of how China has embraced applying artificial intelligence to medicine.