Vivace Using AI to Fight the Coronavirus
The union between technology and healthcare has never been so critical, and it only figures to grow in importance in the coming months (and perhaps years). We recently took a look at the way tech companies are contributing to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, from contact tracing through smartphone apps to designing and manufacturing new types of ventilators. We’ve also examined the way big data and AI are being utilized in both the public and private healthcare sectors to streamline processes and increase overall efficiency. Now Vivace Health Solutions, a company focused on the utilization of artificial intelligence in healthcare, has created a platform the company says has been extremely effective in identifying early stage-signs of the primary causes of death associated with the coronavirus, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and resulting sepsis.
Vivace’s platform, VFusion, claims to integrate the hands-on knowledge and expert opinions of medical professionals with AI and machine learning to accurately forecast ARDS and sepsis in their early stages. VFusion correlates digital medical records and patient histories with real-time data being collected from bedside monitoring equipment to give hospital staff the early warning they need to take the necessary steps to curb the progression of the disease. According to the company, in recent implementations in hospital settings, VFusion detected sepsis in both children and adults six hours earlier on average than typical clinical practices, as well as finding previous cases of sepsis that had been misdiagnosed. Vivace is currently collaborating with Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., to study the effect of an early warning system in treating pediatric sepsis cases.
"Developed in partnership with leading critical-care experts and healthcare institutions, our AI application is ready for wide adoption in U.S. hospitals," according toTom Velez, PhD, a former NASA engineer and founder and CEO of Vivace. "Due to the chaos and overburdened hospitals and clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an ideal time to implement a continuous surveillance platform that can reliably discriminate those in non-ICU settings who are in need of critical care from the many with mild/moderate COVID-19 illness. Even in the best of circumstances, differentiating ARDS and sepsis pathologies can be difficult. With discoveries being made daily, a platform that can rapidly incorporate and disseminate the consensus of COVID-19 experts is urgently needed. Clinicians need the support of an agile and reliable clinical decision support tool to serve as a second pair of eyes to support the monitoring of all hospital patients."
Technology is already being implemented at the point of infection, particularly with tracing the people an infected person has recently come into contact with -- utilizing technology to predict and prevent the more severe progressions of the disease is a logical next step. This technology could obviously have benefits beyond treating the coronavirus – diagnostic tools that can more accurately predict serious medical conditions before they reach critical status could revolutionize the healthcare industry and save countless lives. Imagine an AI that could foresee cancer or a stroke based on medical history and factors like a patient’s environment and diet and exercise regimen – that’s the kind of thing they award Nobel Prizes for. We’ll keep an eye on Vivace and other AI healthcare platforms to see how this technology evolves going forward.