New Canadian app working to 'cut through the information clutter' of COVID-19

A new app is looking to help health-care professionals and the public make better-informed decisions about COVID-19 for their patients, their families and themselves by collecting peer-reviewed scientific papers and hosting them in one place. The new app, called COVID AIKnowledgeEnable (COVID KE), uses artificial intelligence to search multiple peer-reviewed medical data sources in combination with collective insights of health-care professionals to deliver the most relevant findings and advice to users. The application, created by Canadian medical software developer Real Time Medical (RTM), also features confidence ratings and commentary from doctors to further assist users in determining which articles are the most helpful for them. "It really is a tool that attempts to combine both artificial intelligence and collective intelligence in real time on a single integrated platform to help users engage in research and education by helping them locate trustworthy articles," RTM CEO and co-founder Ian Maynard told CTVNews.ca. Maynard explained in a phone interview last week that COVID KE only uses trusted peer-reviewed sources including The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and others, along with the latest federal health guidelines for Canada to help "users cut through the information clutter associated with COVID." The app is the first of its kind in the world to combine the power of artificial intelligence with the collective knowledge of experts to sort through misinformation, according to the company.