Artificial intelligence at the service of the national emergency
20 March, 2020 - The Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital 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. From today, the Lazio regional health system network can take advantage of this system to provide a precise and fast response on the virus starting from the analysis of the images of a lung CT scan.
Provide a diagnosis in 20 seconds with a 98,5 percent confidence rate. These are the cutting-edge results of the software successfully tested on anonymised patients by the radiologists of our Polyclinic, led by the Director of the Diagnostic Imaging Unit prof. Carlo Cosimo Quattrocchi and the Director of Imaginging Center prof. Bruno Beomonte Zobel. The work - the start of which was possible thanks to the support of Carpoint - is the result of a collaboration with ingChinese engineers from the European company who have created an artificial intelligence system suitable for Italian needs. The application, in addition to providing an 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 pulmonary compromise and therefore provide an evaluation of prognosis, improvement or worsening of the patient's situation. This system, which UCBM will continue to implement on the research front for an ever greater knowledge of the virus, it allows the immediate exclusion of pathological situations that have nothing to do with Covid-19 and which can be treated in a targeted and timely manner.
“This innovation – underline prof. Carlo Cosimo Quattrocchi and the prof. Bruno Beomonte Zobel – opens up very significant perspectives in the current emergency situation, allowing us 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 for patients who do not need them. But the system, which we will help develop on the basis of European data and which is also a precursor to an evolution in a radiomics key, also creates a turning point for the next few 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.”
The Health Councilor of the Lazio Region, Alessio D'Amato, expressed gratitude to theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma for the initiative carried out and made available to combat the virus; "We have already made available our 'Advice' IT platform 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 healthcare system confirms itself as a point of important reference in the fight against COVID-19".