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How Facebook Plans to Help the Medical Industry Manage COVID-19

person holding smartphone using facebook account

In recent healthcare news, Facebook was fortunate enough to create three AI prototypes to assist the healthcare industry with its on-going fight against COVID-19. They did it to determine the health situation of each patient that’s positive of COVID-19 by monitoring the information on their x-ray results.

Due to the havoc that the coronavirus has caused over the past year, healthcare workers, researchers, and scientists are scrambling to perfect the vaccine that will hopefully end the crisis. While the entire world remains on lockdown, people are expected to cooperate and make it less complicated for frontliners, so they can keep saving lives one patient at a time. 

This is why the researchers working for Facebook asked for assistance from NYU Langone Health and went out of their way to come up with a solution to make doctors’ jobs more manageable.

In this article, we will share more about how the AI models work:

The Medical Power of Modern Technology

After creating three AI machines, Facebook is on a mission to help doctors develop a better way to diagnose patients and keep those at higher risk from being sent home. Moreover, the innovative solutions work to inform hospitals when they need to make more room at their ICU or call for reinforcement.

Among the newly developed artificial intelligence systems, two machines can learn a patient’s health situation by using multiple chest x-rays. Meanwhile, the third unit will guide medical professionals by alerting them of the supplemental oxygen a patient requires to survive.

Assisting Patients One Day at a Time

Despite the new year’s arrival, everyone worldwide continues to witness the rise of positive cases due to the pandemic. In fact, more patients are in desperate need of oxygen, leading hospitals, health centers, and clinics to fall short of tanks, beds, and other essential ICU supplies.

This is why Facebook plans for their new technology to serve as a helpful tool to remind hospitals and medical companies when it’s time to refill their stocks of medical supplies. Since the machine works to calculate a patient’s given health at least four days in advance, it can signal the doctors and nurses beforehand to perform the needful.

When the health workers receive an alert regarding a patient’s health status, they can instantly prepare for the necessary resources to avoid running out and failing to meet the people’s needs. Unfortunately, due to the cutting-edge technology and knowledge that people poured into building the model, only the best doctors worldwide can grab the opportunity to test it at the moment.

Gathering Results From X-Ray Readings

Facebook’s new technology works by operating the machines to consume two sets of data containing information on COVID negative patients. Meanwhile, 26,838 x-ray results from 4,914 COVID positive patients are also included.

The tech company incorporates Momentum Contrast, a method applied on machines to train them to gather information using a neural network that seeks to gather information. The data collected comes from final results taken from chest x-rays.

A neural network is a calculating process following a human’s cognitive functions and thinking capabilities. The AI technology gains further inspiration to recognize patterns and compare them with massive amounts of data.

Conclusion

Although Facebook’s new AI technology is yet to be showcased to the public, it still serves as a huge accomplishment for a highly reputable company. They were able to develop a unique solution to help the population continue surviving in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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