In Lazio, at the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital, the first hospital in Europe with an early diagnosis and monitoring system against the virus. Based on the analysis of lung CT images, successfully used in China's Wuhan hospitals, it has a reliability of 98,5%.
An aid for hospitals to manage ICU beds, contribute to system maintenance and improve its efficiency and appropriateness.
The Polyclinic makes this important artificial intelligence system available to all healthcare facilities in Lazio and nationally. The radiologists of the other hospitals will be able to provide diagnostic images of their patients and receive feedback from the radiologists of the Campus Bio-Medico.
Rome, 18 March 2020 - The Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital, part of the Lazio regional health system network, is the first hospital in Europe to acquire the artificial intelligence system used in the hospitals of Wuhan (China) for the early diagnosis and monitoring of pneumonia from Covid- 19.
The artificial intelligence system is able to provide an answer in 20 seconds starting from the analysis of the lung CT images. The reliability rate is 98,5 percent and was tested with full success on blinded anonymized patients by radiologists of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital, led by the Director of the Diagnostic Imaging Unit Prof. Carlo Cosimo Quattrocchi and by the Director of the Imaging Center Prof. Bruno Beomonte Zobel.
The Chinese engineers of the European company that devised the technological solution worked hard with the staff of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital to install the artificial intelligence system and together they developed it to adapt it to Italian needs.
The application based on artificial intelligence, in addition to providing the immediate answer on the type of pneumonia (viral from Covid-19 vs. other pathologies such as bacterial pneumonia, COPD, etc.), is able to calculate the volume of lung compromise expressed in cubic cm and therefore provide an assessment of the prognosis, improvement or worsening of the patient's situation.
In this emergency situation, the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital is making this important system of massive analysis of CT diagnostic tests available to all Lazio and national structures. In fact, it will be sufficient for hospitals throughout the territory to provide digitally the lung CT images of patients and the team of the Imaging Center and Diagnostic Imaging of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital will provide the structured feedback of the artificial intelligence system. Concentrating the reading of the data will favor learning by the system for an increasingly accurate performance and will help to have an overview of the evolution of the contagion in an increasingly targeted and timely manner.
This system – which theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma and its Polyclinic will contribute to implementing on the research front for an ever-increasing knowledge of the new virus - allows us to immediately exclude pathological situations that have nothing to do with Covid-19 and which can be treated in a targeted and timely manner, by activating alert for any patients infected by the virus, immediately bringing them to the attention of the doctor, who is responsible for the in-depth diagnostics.
“The initiative carried out by theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma which is made available to the entire regional network to combat the virus. We have already made available - comments the Health Councilor of the Lazio Region - Alessio D'Amato – our IT platform 'Advice' which connects all the regional emergency rooms so that there can be a rapid transmission of images and consequently a diagnosis with the risk of pneumonia. The Lazio health system is confirmed as an important point of reference in the fight against COVID-19 ".
“The Campus Bio-Medico – underlines the Director General of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital, Paolo Sormani - is at the forefront of the Covid-19 emergency on two complementary fronts: both for its commitment as a university in epidemiological and phylogenetic research and in the Polyclinic with the day and night work of the analysis laboratory to give timely responses to the numerous swabs from the Rome 6 ASL of the Castelli Romani, both for the fundamental function of providing medical and surgical assistance to "non-Covid" patients, with indications that cannot be deferred but are no longer manageable by Covid hospitals, thus contributing to providing health responses to citizens and to lighten the burden on other structures of the region focused on assisting patients positive for the virus”.
"This innovation activated within the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital - underline the Director of the UOC of Diagnostic Imaging, Carlo Cosimo Quattrocchi and the Director of the Imaging Center, Bruno Beomonte Zobel – opens up very significant perspectives in the current emergency situation, making it possible to process a mass of data that would otherwise be impossible to analyse, improving the appropriateness of therapies and freeing up precious places in intensive care from patients who do not need them. But the system, which we will help develop on the basis of European data and which is also prodromal to an evolution in a radiomics key, will also create a turning point for the coming months, when, once the emergency has passed, we hope that the cases of Covid -19 will become more sporadic and therefore more difficult to identify”.
