March 24, 2020 — Health personnel exhibiting symptoms of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) will be prioritized in the testing when the Artificial Intelligence COVID19 CT Scan Analyzer, a new technology of Huawei company that helps doctors detect Coronavirus Disease, starts operating at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
As the city recorded its first confirmed case yesterday and with a few more presumptive ones awaiting confirmation, a number of health workers had manifested signs and symptoms forcing them to self- quarantine, according to Dr. Rowena Galpo.
Tests with the new technology which can churn out results within a short period of two minutes would relieve patients including health workers from the burden of having to wait for results for days and give them lead time to undertake quarantine and medication protocols.
“I am not saying that test results of this technology are confirmatory because they are not but it is said to have 98% accuracy so at least we can have a heads-up on whether a particular patient is a presumptive case or not,” Mayor Benjie Magalong yesterday said.
He said it is helpful as cases that will not turn out presumptive need not stay at the hospital or quarantine facilities thereby preventing patients from swamping our hospitals which have limited number of rooms vis-a-vis the number of cases the city expects to have in the coming days.
Executive Asst. V Philip Puzon who heads the Management Information and Technical Division (MITD) which worked with Huawei-EVI support team and Baguio doctors in installing the program said Baguio is lucky to be the first recipient of the Huawei technology.
“The technology works in that its server is connected to the AI Cloud of Huawei which scans Philippine test results and compare them to the repository of results then tells the doctor if the case is highly probable in terms of percentage of diagnosis, however, in the end, it is still the doctor who will decide on the diagnosis,” Puzon explained.
Although, the program’s diagnostic capability is also limited, it can still shed a lot of light on probable cases, he added.
Initial test runs conducted Monday proved successful, according to the mayor and barring hitches, the technology is expected to be operational this week. ** Aileen P. Refuerzo
