COVID-19 has emerged as a pandemic that is posing threat to the existence of hundreds and thousands of people. In light of this situation, an unexpected result of the partnership between Norway India Partnership Initiative (NIPI) and Wadhwani Institute has been the development of a triaging tool for detecting COVID-19 suspect cases.
Proposed solution- AI enabled COVID cough Tool
Cough is one of the predominant presenting symptoms in case of COVID-19, with almost 70% confirmed patients experiencing it. Triaging persons based on characteristics of cough that are likely to correspond with acoustic signature of COVID-19 may help guide high probability suspect cases towards early health interventions.
Wadhwani AI, a nonprofit organization is in the process of developing an Artificial Intelligence enabled tool for COVID-19 suspect cases using cough sounds using Artificial intelligence utilizing the data collected through suspected cased from the state which would be utilized as screening/triaging tool for and can be integrated with ‘Arogya-Setu’ app developed by Government of India.
Approach
Suspected cases presenting for COVID-19 testing at designated sites will be enrolled after an informed consent. After acquiring the basic demographic information and clinical history the patient will be asked to provide short “solicited cough” sound samples, which will be recorded using a smartphone based application by the data collector. The result of the COVID-19 test will be used as labels to cough sounds. These parameters will be used to develop an artificial intelligence-based tool to triage symptomatic patients for testing for COVID-19.