Chinese Hospitals Deploy AI to Help Diagnose Covid-19

Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, is at the heart of the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that has shut down cities in China, as well as Iran, Italy, and South Korea. That's forced the hospital to become a test bed for how quickly a modern medical center can adapt to a new infectious disease epidemic. One experiment is underway in Zhongnan's radiology department, where staff are using artificial intelligence software to detect visual signs of the pneumonia associated with Covid-19 on images from lung CT scans. Haibo Xu, professor and chair of radiology at Zhongnan Hospital, says the software helps overworked staff screen patients and prioritize those most likely to have Covid-19 for further examination and testing. He emailed WIRED an audio file of himself answering a reporter's questions about the project and answered other questions by email.