AI Finds New Predictive Markers of COVID-19 Severity

Researchers and healthcare organizations are putting their heads together to consider how technology could ease the ever-worsening COVID-19 global crisis. A partnership between NYU and the hospitals in Wenzhou, China are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help predict exactly which COVID-19 patients go on to develop severe respiratory disease.

“We hope that the tool, when fully developed, will be useful to physicians as they assess which moderately ill patients really need beds and who can safely go home, with hospital resources stretched thin.”

Symptoms for COVID-19, including cough, fever, and difficulty breathing start to appear after an incubation phase that can take as long as two weeks. According to research, around 80 percent of infected individuals experience the mild form of the coronavirus infection. Individuals at risk for developing severe complications from infection are those with underlying health complications, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. However, correlating the severity of the disease with health status at the time of infection may not be as straightforward as initially thought.