Apollo Hospitals to leverage AI platform of Israeli firm to detect Covid-19

Chennai headquartered Apollo Hospitals will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) platform AI1, developed by Shefayim, HaMerkaz-based deep learning medical imaging analytics company Zebra Medical Vision, to diagnose Covid-19 and track its progression.

The AI platform will be integrated into Apollo Radiology International’s Covid-19 reporting centre to automatically detect and quantify suspected Covid-19 findings based on a machine learning patented algorithm and computed tomography (CT) scan analysis, as per a statement.

Read: Revisiting global healthcare in a post Covid-19 world

“By identifying and tracking the development of lesions, Zebra Med software offers key insight into disease severity and enables doctors to diagnose and evaluate patients swiftly and effectively. The vast majority of Covid-19 patients are mild, so having this automated tool has helped make critical decisions on whether to hospitalise (a patient or not),” Sreenivasa Raju K, CEO and medical director, Apollo Radiology International, said.

The companies first collaborated in March 2019, supported by government-backed India-Israel Industrial R&D and Technological Innovation Fund, to use an AI tool to detect intracranial hemorrhage.

Additionally, the Covid-19 solution will enable future collaboration on medical findings, such as tuberculosis, the company said.

“Zebra Med researchers and engineers used clinical data from a vast amount of medical images to train the AI model of the Covid-19 solution. Our partnership with Apollo Hospitals allows us to leverage a patented algorithm we had developed in the past for imaging features of Covid-19 pneumonia in order to help Apollo’s staff to track the progression of the disease,” Ohad Arazi, CEO of Zebra Medical, said.

India currently has more than 1,90,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with more than 5,000 deaths, as per the latest government data.