A coronavirus app coupled with machine intelligence will soon enable
an individual to get an at-home risk assessment based on how they feel
and where they’ve been in about a minute, and direct those deemed at
risk to the nearest definitive testing facility, investigators say.
It will also help provide local and
public health officials with real time information on emerging demographics of those most at risk for
coronavirus
so they can better target prevention and treatment initiatives, the
Medical College of Georgia investigators report in the journal
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
“We wanted to help identify people who are at high risk for coronavirus, help expedite their access to screening and to
medical care
and reduce spread of this infectious disease,” says Dr. Arni S.R.
Srinivasa Rao, director of the Laboratory for Theory and Mathematical
Modeling in the MCG Division of Infectious Diseases at Augusta
University and the study’s corresponding author.
Rao and co-author Dr. Jose Vazquez, chief of the MCG Division of
Infectious Diseases, are working with developers to finalize the app
which should be available within a few weeks and will be free because it
addresses a public health concern.
The app will ask individuals where they live; other demographics like
gender, age and race; and about recent contact with an individual known
to have coronavirus or who has traveled to areas, like Italy and China,
with a relatively high incidence of the viral infection in the last 14
days.
It will also ask about common symptoms of infection and their
duration including fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, sputum
production, headache, diarrhea and pneumonia. It will also enable
collection of similar information for those who live with the individual
but who cannot fill out their own survey.
Artificial intelligence will then use an algorithm Rao developed to
rapidly assess the individual’s information, send them a risk
assessment—no risk, minimal risk, moderate or high risk—and alert the
nearest facility with testing ability that a health check is likely
needed. If the patient is unable to travel, the nearest facility will be
notified of the need for a mobile health check and possible remote
testing.
The collective information of many individuals will aid rapid and
accurate identification of geographic regions, including cities,
counties, towns and villages, where the virus is circulating, and the
relative risk in that region so health care facilities and providers can
better prepare resources that may be needed, Rao says. It also will
help investigators learn more about how the virus is spreading, the
investigators say.
Once the app is ready, it will live on the augusta.edu domain and likely in app stores on the iOS and Android platforms.
It is imperative that we evaluate novel models in an attempt to control the rapidly spreading virus, Rao and Vazquez write.
Technology can assist faster identification of possible cases and aid
timely intervention, they say, noting the coronavirus app could be
easily adapted for other infectious diseases. The accessibility and
rapidity of the app coupled with
machine intelligence means it also could be utilized for screening wherever large crowds gather, such as major sporting events.
While symptoms like fever and cough are a wide net, they are needed in order to not miss patients, Vazquez notes.
“We are trying to decrease the exposure of people who are sick to
people who are not sick,” says Vazquez. We also want to ensure that
people who are infected get a definitive diagnosis and get the
supportive care they may need, he says.
While stressing that the infection with coronavirus is not a
pandemic— defined by the World Health Organization, as the worldwide
spread of a new disease, including numerous flu pandemics like HINI, or
swine flu, in which people find themselves exposed to a virus for which
they have no immunity—”This is what you have to do with pandemics,” says
Vazquez. “You don’t want to expose an infected person to an uninfected
person.” If problems with infections persist and grow, drive-thru
testing sites may be another need, he says.
The investigators hope this readily available method to assess an
individual’s risk will actually help quell any developing panic or undue
concern over coronavirus, or COVID-19.
“People will not have to wait for hospitals to screen them directly,”
says Rao. “We want to simplify people’s lives and calm their concerns
by getting information directly to them.”
If concern about coronavirus prompted a lot of people to show up at
hospitals, many of which already are at capacity with flu cases, it
would further overwhelm those facilities and increase potential exposure
for those who come, says Vazquez.
Tests for the coronavirus, which include a nostril and mouth swab and
sputum analysis, are now being more widely distributed by the CDC, and
the Food and Drug Administration also has given permission to some of
the more sophisticated labs, particularly those at
academic medical centers
like Augusta University Medical Center, to use their own methods to
look for signs of the viral infection, which the hospital will be
pursuing.
As of this week, about 90,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in 62 countries, with China having the most cases.
The CDC and WHO say that health care providers should obtain a
detailed travel history of individuals being evaluated with fever and
acute respiratory illness. They also have recommendations in place for
how to prevent spread of the disease while treating patients.
Currently when people do present, for example, at the Emergency
Department at AU Medical Center, with concerns about the virus, they are
brought in by a separate entrance and escorted to a negative pressure
room by employees dressed in hazmat suits per CDC protocols, Vazquez
says. As of today, all those who have presented at AU Medical Center
have tested negative, he says.
Read the published study
here or
here.
More information:
Arni S.R. Srinivasa Rao et al. Identification of COVID-19 Can be Quicker
through Artificial Intelligence framework using a Mobile Phone-Based
Survey in the Populations when Cities/Towns Are Under Quarantine,
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (2020).
DOI: 10.1017/ice.2020.61
