Digital diagnosis: Why teaching computers to read medical records could help against COVID-19 | COVID-19 - World Economic Forum

This article is published in collaboration with The Conversation.

• Natural language processing (NLP) algorithms could find patterns across many thousands of patients’ records, helping to find effective treatments. 
• They could also help to predict which patients are more likely to become seriously ill with COVID-19 - and predict upcoming surges of the pandemic. 

---

Medical records are a rich source of health data. When combined, the information they contain can help researchers better understand diseases and treat them more effectively. 

Information gained from computer models could prove critical in the fight against coronavirus.
Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman

This includes COVID-19. But to unlock this rich resource, researchers first need to read it.

We may have moved on from the days of handwritten medical notes, but the information recorded in modern electronic health records can be just as hard to access and interpret. It’s an old joke that doctors’ handwriting is illegible, but it turns out their typing isn’t much better.. 

Finding ways to fight COVID-19

By drawing together health records using these tools, we’re now using these techniques to see patterns that are relevant to the pandemic. For example, we recently used our tools to discover whether drugs commonly prescribed to treat high blood pressure, diabetes and other conditions – known as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) 

angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) – increase the chances of becoming severely ill with COVID-19.

Read more...

Source: World Economic Forum