An artificial intelligence (AI) tool has been developed by a team of international researchers that can predict how much extra oxygen a COVID-19 patient might need during hospital care. How much extra oxygen a COVID-19 patient might need during hospital care. The app was tested out in a number of hospitals across five continents to check the accuracy of the AI tool.
According to the results, it predicted the oxygen needed within 24 hours of a patient’s arrival in the emergency department, with a sensitivity of 95 per cent and a specificity of over 88 per cent.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Medicine on Thursday which included the outcomes of around 10,000 COVID-19 patients from across the world that were analysed.
An algorithm has been used to analyse chest X-rays and electronic health data from hospital patients with COVID-19 symptoms with the technique, known as federated learning.
The patient data was fully anonymised and an algorithm was sent to each hospital so no data was shared or left its location to maintain strict patient privacy.
Once the algorithm had ‘learned from the data, the analysis was brought together to build the AI tool.
Professor Fiona Gilbert, from the University of Cambridge in the UK, who led the study said, “Federated learning has the transformative power to bring AI innovation to the clinical workflow.”
“Usually in AI development, when you create an algorithm on one hospital’s data, it doesn’t work well at any other hospital,” said study first author Ittai Dayan, from Mass General Bingham in the US.
The researchers by developing the model using objective, multimodal data from different continents were able to build a generalisable model that can help frontline physicians worldwide. The study took just two weeks of AI ‘learning’ to achieve high-quality predictions by bringing together collaborators across North and South America, Europe and Asia.
“Federated Learning allowed researchers to collaborate and set a new standard for what we can do globally, using the power of AI,” said Mona G Flores, Global Head for Medical AI at healthcare technology company NVIDIA.
“This will advance AI not just for healthcare but across all industries looking to build robust models without sacrificing privacy,” Flores said.