Artificial Intelligence To Diagnose Coronavirus Developed By Alibaba
Alibaba, a Chinese technology giant developed an artificial intelligence system for diagnosing the new COVID-19 coronavirus in its research institute Damo Academy.
Alibaba is like a video game company, Microsoft, Amazon and a nation-wide healthcare network all rolled into one. Every branch in the company is fed solutions from the Alibaba’s artificial intelligence (AI) department.
According to the claims, Alibaba’s new artificial intelligence system can analyze CT scans of suspected patients’ chests and detect the coronavirus infection with 96% accuracy against viral pneumonia cases. They also claim that it will take only 20 seconds to diagnose the infection from around 300 images, which otherwise takes 15 mins on an average when manually done. The technology is meant to free up the doctors for more important tasks by taking over simple, but time-consuming task of diagnosis.
The team trained the artificial intelligence system with images and data from 5,000 confirmed coronavirus patients from China. At least 100 healthcare facilities including the Qiboshan Hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan, built specifically for COVID-19 cases, are currently using Alibaba’s AI according to the Review’s report. The Qiboshan hospital has automated helpers on hand, such as robots that
carry medicine for the staff and gadgets which monitor patients’ temperature around the clock.On Feb. 5, the Chinese National Health Commission widened the criteria for the diagnosis of coronavirus infections, considering CT scan results along with the previous genetic analysis method, to make sure patients with clinical symptoms will also receive required treatment as soon as possible.
Other companies like Rival healthcare organization Ping An also have come up with a similar diagnosing system for coronavirus. Geoff Kau, the company’s co-president and chief strategy officer of its Smart City division, said its smart image-reading system has provided services to over 1,500 medical institutions and free service to more than 5,000 patients. The system can generate results through a smart analysis in 15 seconds with an accuracy rate of 90%.
