AI is helping triage coronavirus patients. The tools may be here to stay.

Rizwan Malik had always had an interest in AI. As the lead radiologist at the Royal Bolton Hospital, run by the UK's National Health Service (NHS), he saw its potential to make his job easier. In his hospital, patients often had to wait six hours or more for a specialist to look at their x-rays. If an emergency room doctor could get an initial reading from an AI-based tool, it could dramatically shrink that wait time. A specialist could follow up the AI system's reading with a more thorough diagnosis later.