Chinese, US scholars jointly develop AI model to improve diagnosis of sick children
- Drawing on records of nearly 600,000 paediatric patients, the software diagnosed common childhood diseases with an 85 per cent accuracy rate
While artificial intelligence is shaping up as a new battleground between China and the US in areas such as autonomous cars, data collection and the military, there is one application where both sides are happy to cooperate: health care for kids.
A research paper published earlier this week in the Nature Medicine journal, co-authored by AI researchers from both countries, describes an AI-enabled data model that can assist doctors in diagnosing illnesses in children, including toddlers who cannot verbally communicate their symptoms.
Drawing on records of nearly 600,000 paediatric patients in China over an 18-month period, the software was able to diagnose common childhood diseases with an accuracy rate of over 85 per cent, according to Ni Hao, one of the paper’s co-authors and chief executive of Chinese AI start-up Yitu Healthcare.
Results for the most frequently encountered or potentially life-threatening illnesses, from influenza to meningitis, were even better with a 93 per cent accuracy rate, the paper showed.
The project was a collaboration among researchers from Chinese hospitals, Yitu and a University of California San Diego (UCSD) team headed by Zhang Kang, another co-author of the paper.