World First for Artificial Intelligence to Treat COVID-19 Patients Worldwide

Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge along with 20 other hospitals from across the world and healthcare technology leader, NVIDIA, have used artificial intelligence (AI) to predict Covid patients’ oxygen needs on a global scale.

The research was sparked by the pandemic and set out to build an AI tool to predict how much extra oxygen a Covid-19 patient may need in the first days of hospital care, using data from across four continents. 

The technique, known as federated learning, used an algorithm to analyze chest x-rays and electronic health data from hospital patients with Covid symptoms. To maintain strict patient confidentiality, the patient data was fully anonymized and an algorithm was sent to each hospital so no data was shared or left its location.  

Once the algorithm had ‘learned’ from the data, the analysis was brought together to build an AI tool which could predict the oxygen needs of hospital Covid patients anywhere in the world.