Our team saw potential for this type of AI-based solution and worked to make a similar tool available to our patient population. The Partners Covid-19 Screener provides a simple, straightforward chat interface, presenting patients with a series of questions based on content from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Partners HealthCare experts. In this way, it too can screen enormous numbers of people and rapidly differentiate between those who might really be sick with Covid-19 and those who are likely to be suffering from less threatening ailments. We anticipate this AI bot will alleviate high volumes of patient traffic to the hotline, and extend and stratify the system’s care in ways that would have been unimaginable until recently. Development is now under way to facilitate triage of patients with symptoms to most appropriate care setting, including virtual urgent care, primary care providers, respiratory illness clinics, or the emergency department. Most importantly, the chatbot can also serve as a near instantaneous dissemination method for supporting our widely distributed providers, as we have seen the need for frequent clinical triage algorithm updates based on a rapidly changing landscape.
Similarly, at both Brigham and Women’s Hospital and at Massachusetts General Hospital, physician researchers are exploring the potential use of intelligent robots developed at Boston Dynamics and MIT to deploy in Covid surge clinics and inpatient wards to perform tasks (obtaining vital signs or delivering medication) that would otherwise require human contact in an effort to mitigate disease transmission.
AI Initiatives are Already Emerging
Several governments and hospital systems around the world have leveraged AI-powered sensors to support triage in sophisticated ways. Chinese technology company Baidu developed a no-contact infrared sensor system to quickly single out individuals with a fever, even in crowds. Beijing’s Qinghe railway station is equipped with this system to identify potentially contagious individuals, replacing a cumbersome manual screening process. Similarly, Florida’s Tampa General Hospital deployed an AI system in collaboration with Care.ai at its entrances to intercept individuals with potential Covid-19 symptoms from visiting patients. Through cameras positioned at entrances, the technology conducts a facial thermal scan and picks up on other symptoms, including sweat and discoloration, to ward off visitors with fever.
Beyond screening, AI is being used to monitor Covid-19 symptoms, provide decision support for CT scans, and automate hospital operations. Meanwhile, Zhongnan Hospital in China uses an AI-driven CT scan interpreter that identifies Covid-19 when radiologists aren’t available. China’s Wuhan Wuchang Hospital established a smart field hospital staffed largely by robots. Patient vital signs were monitored using connected thermometers and bracelet-like devices. Intelligent robots delivered medicine and food to patients, alleviating physician exposure to the virus and easing the workload of health care workers experiencing exhaustion. And in South Korea, the government released an app allowing users to self-report symptoms, alerting them if they leave a “quarantine zone” in order to curb the impact of “super-spreaders” who would otherwise go on to infect large populations.
Digital Transformation Now
The spread of Covid-19 is stretching operational systems in health care and beyond. We have seen shortages of everything, from masks and gloves to ventilators, and from emergency room capacity to ICU beds to the speed and reliability of internet connectivity. The reason is both simple and terrifying: Our economy and health care systems are geared to handle linear, incremental demand, while the virus grows at an exponential rate. Our national health system cannot keep up with this kind of explosive demand without the rapid and large-scale adoption of digital operating models.
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