The coronavirus epidemic has impelled hospitals to look for vaccines and develop technology to allow for faster detection of the virus.
The “Policlinico Campus Biomedico” in Rome is one of them. This hospital, inspired by the Catholic faith, is implementing artificial intelligence systems used in Wuhan during the public health emergency.
With the help of Chinese doctors, they've developed software to analyze the results of thorax CAT scans. In only 20 seconds, doctors can know if the patient's pneumonia is the same as that typically caused by the coronavirus.
BRUNO BEOMONTE ZOBEL
Policlinico Campus Biomedico (Rome)
“It's a very useful tool because in cases where test results have come back negative, for different reasons, the thorax CAT scan has proven very useful for identifying the positive cases.”
This system doesn't replace the test, but complements it. It confirms whether or not a case is positive. It also provides very concrete details about the state of the patient's lungs. The Campus Biomedico says this method is 98.5 percent reliable.
Italian hospitals work on two fronts: direct treatment of coronavirus patients, and research. They work to discover vaccines and to understand why the number of COVID-19 cases in Italy has been so high. Campus Biomedico's research now leads experts to a new hypothesis: that Italy didn't infect Europe.
A study published in the Journal of Medical Virology points out that one of the epicenters of infection in Italy didn't come from China, but from a northern European country, probably Germany.
Javier Romero
Translation: Claudia Torres
