Alibaba’s New AI System Detects Coronavirus Infection In 20 SECONDS

Navin Bondade 0 Comments Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Deep Learning, Machine Learning

Coronavirus is the most critical issue in health sector, there around 92,311 cases of coronavirus outbreak and the virus have caused more than 3,137 deaths worldwide, China is the country that faces most of the damage.

The country is trying best to reduce the spread of coronavirus and providing healthcare to the infected ones. The Chinese blue-chip companies are also at the forefront of this effort, one of these blue-chip companies is Alibaba who has claimed that they have created an AI system that detects the coronavirus with 96% accuracy.

This is substantial, as currently there is a debate about even the correct quarantine period needed and the exact symptoms to look out for. Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19 can exist in a person long before they start exhibiting the symptoms and even after they have recovered.

Nikkei Asian Review reported that Alibaba has launched the system, which works by assessing CT scans of patients’ chest and will be able to detect the presence of the virus within 20 seconds.

Compared to AI, humans take 15 minutes to make a diagnosis.

Researchers at the academy said they the system has been trained using data from 5,000 confirmed Coronavirus cases adding that the system could identify differences in CT scans between patients infected with the novel virus and those with ordinary viral pneumonia with an accuracy of up to 96%.

The algorithm included the latest treatment guidelines and recently published research. Alibaba’s system has been tested in hospitals throughout China and is now deployed in 100 healthcare facilities.

The system is already available at Zhengzhou hospital in Henan province, this system will quickly be available in a hundred other establishments. This includes the provinces of Hubei, Guangdong, and Anhui.

The new algorithm could alleviate pressure on hospitals, as it can complete the recognition process within 20 seconds, according to Alibaba. Usually, it will take a doctor between five and 15 minutes to analyze a CT scan of one suspected patient and give a clinical diagnosis, with scans sometimes including more than 300 images.

This new diagnosis system is not Alibaba’s first attempt to use AI to combat coronavirus. Researchers from Damo Academy have developed an AI-powered public health service tool that provides information related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which was first deployed by the government of Zhejiang province on Jan. 27.

The system can answer most inquiries regarding the pandemic via an app.

If you don’t know what Alibaba is, it’s the Chinese version of Amazon. Now, Alibaba, much like Amazon, doesn’t just participate in e-retail, it has other ventures as well, and some of those ventures fall into the AI realm.

Apart from Alibaba, other Chinese tech companies are also pitching in. Search giant Baidu and healthcare organization Ping An have also launched similar systems.

AI may help reduce the burden on overworked doctors battling the outbreak worldwide.

Alibaba is continuously contributing to combat the virus outbreak – the company’s founder, Jack Ma, had in January donated $14 million to efforts to combat the disease. The company donated another $144 million towards providing medical supplies to the worst affected Hubei province of China.