Huawei cloud in collaboration with Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Lanwon Technology has recently developed and launched an AI-assisted quantitative medical image analysis service to aid faster COVID-19 diagnosis, said a press release.
Huawei Launches AI-Assistance to Diagnose Covid-19 https://t.co/hCPtchuWbf pic.twitter.com/Rcbqfzesat
— Sajjawal Khan Solangi (@tezinfomation) March 18, 2020
The launching of the service will play a big role in diagnosing coronavirus patients after the National Health Commission of China included CT features of patients infected with COVID-19 virus as the standard clinical diagnosis in Hubei province in its official diagnosis and treatment solution released on February 4, 2020.
With HUAWEI CLOUD’s leading AI technologies such as computer vision and medical image analysis, the service can automatically, quickly, and correctly output CT quantification results to imaging and clinical doctors, said the release.
This is help to deal with the shortage of imaging doctors who can accurately diagnose COVID-19, relieve the pressures of quarantines and reduce the heavy workload for doctors, it added.
The service also utilizes the powerful computing capability of Huawei Ascend series AI chips to provide quantization result of a single case in seconds.
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In addition, with Huawei’s Ascend AI-series chips, the service can output CT quantization results in seconds. Compared with the traditional methods that doctors use to manually draw ROIs for quantitative evaluation, this service significantly improves diagnosis efficiency.
China using technology to fight against Coronavirus?
China’s tech giants are accelerating their efforts in the field of health-care technology using cloud computing and artificial intelligence, as the country looks to contain the fast-spreading new coronavirus. Baidu is China’s largest search engine but has also developed AI capabilities too.
It currently runs an online doctor consultation platform and the company has made that free for any online medical queries. Baidu said the platform has handled over 15 million inquiries from users and hosts over 100,000 doctors to answer questions.
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Baidu is also giving an algorithm it calls “LinerFold” for free to gene testing agencies, epidemic control centers and research institutions globally. The algorithm is able to help scientists understand the genetic makeup of the coronavirus, and could help efforts to develop a vaccine.
“The special situation of the epidemic has created huge demand for online medical services and information. The public has been using the internet to gain information about the latest development of the epidemic and professional health-care services,” Yang Minglu, general manager of Baidu’s health-care business unit told CNBC.
“In the future, Baidu health care will continue to focus on technology research and development as well as intelligent health care system, building a one-stop health management service platform and actively participate in China’s public health development.”
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Similarly, Tencent is one of the largest video gaming companies in the world but it also runs China’s most popular messaging platform, WeChat.
The company has launched free online health consultation services via five online health-care platforms through WeChat. There is also a so-called “chatbot” which allows users to ask questions and get basic diagnosis. A chatbot is an automated messaging service.
Tencent has also opened up its supercomputing facility to help researchers find a cure to the virus, CNN reported. Supercomputers can run processes much faster than regular computers. Analysts believe that these developments help the nation deal with Coronavirus.