Earlier this week, Tsinghua University donated its latest research products on combating COVID-19 to hospitals in Wuhan, Hubei province, including a Self-assessment System, a Smart Diagnosis System, and a Medical Image Teleconsultation Platform, a Wireless Vital Monitoring System and AI COVID-19 Community Survey and Monitoring System.
The smart technologies were developed through the joint efforts of the university and the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, among other partners.
The Self-assessment System gives users who fill in an online questionnaire a health assessment and corresponding medical advice -- “no action”, “self-quarantine at home” or “seek medical help”.
The online rating system was jointly developed by Tsinghua University’s Institute for Precision Medicine, its Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital. Since its launch on Feb 1, it has had over three million visits.
Its primary task is to empower the public with the ability to conduct self-assessment of health conditions to facilitate rational decision-making and address undue public fears, according to Dr. Dong Jiahong, executive dean of Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital.
Tsinghua has also released the Smart Diagnosis System equipped with three key functions -- smart image diagnosis, clinical diagnosis, and clinical classification.
It is capable of processing a large number of chest CT images of suspected cases and coming up with comprehensive clinical diagnoses in accordance with the most up to date government guidelines within a very short timeframe. It serves to significantly cut the workloads for clinicians and radiologists and shortens waiting periods for patients.
The project team has utilized clinical records of COVID-19 patients in Wuhan for big-data analysis and used AI deep learning to identify the characteristic patterns in CT images, thus enabling the system to detect and identify COVID-19 infections.
Furthermore, in line with the fifth edition Guideline of Prevention and Treatment of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Pneumonia released by the government, a smart diagnosis module was designed that combines comprehensive input of imaging and epidemiological details, symptoms, and other key clinical information in case investigation.
Capitalizing on smart interpretation of respiratory function parameters, it offers an adaptable clinic classification module that classifies patients by severity of infection. These three modules have been integrated to comprehensively enable clinic and image-related functions.
From Feb 24, Dr. Dong Jiahong, executive vice-president of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association and dean of Tsinghua University School of Medicine, led a team to visit local medical institutions in Wuhan, including Wuchang District Hospital, Tianyou Hospital Affiliated to Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Leishenshan Hospital, and Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, and so on.
During the trip, the team met the frontline staff and surveyed requirements for remote medical support and smart epidemic controls at local isolation treatment centers and community hospitals. The team also helped install and test tele- medical consultation facilities.
