Israeli Startup Can Predict the Spread of Coronavirus
Israeli Startup Can Predict the Spread of Coronavirus
The COVID360 system uses predictive
analytics and artificial intelligence, providing a “heat map” where corona
infections are most prevalent.
Israelis receiving daily coronavirus check-ins via text message
can thank local startup Diagnostic Robotics for developing the cutting-edge
questionnaire that is tracking the spread of the virus with uncanny precision –
and generating actionable recommendations.
“Last Saturday night, we saw worrying data coming from Migdal
HaEmek, Tiberias and Ashkelon,” Kira Radinsky, the company’s cofounder and
chief technology officer, tells ISRAEL21c. “On Monday morning, the government
issued a lockdown order in those cities.”
Diagnostic Robotics has sent its questionnaire to millions of
Israelis, including some 2,000 Covid-19 patients. Some 80 percent of
recipients answer it.
The company is now “working on a media campaign to help raise
awareness even more and keep the numbers high.”
Diagnostic Robotics is based on a decade of research by the
33-year-old Ukrainian-born Radinsky, one of Israel’s top tech stars.
When ISRAEL21c first wrote about Radinsky in 2013, she had just
received her PhD from the Technion (in which she enrolled when she was just 15
years old) and was starting her own company, SalesPredict.
SalesPredict was bought by eBay in 2016 and Radinsky was named
eBay’s director of data science and chief scientist in Israel. She left eBay to
cofound Diagnostic Robotics last year.
Radinsky’s years at eBay were focused not on disease but rather on
predicting which customers would buy which items. When the opportunity arose to
get back into the healthcare space, she didn’t hesitate.
Radinsky teamed up with two of her colleagues from the Technion –
robotics expert Moshe Shoham and graduate Jonathan Amir – and raised $24
million in 2019. With Amir as CEO, Diagnostic Robotics has a team of 100 data
scientists, economists, engineers, doctors and designers.
Triage Tool
When Radinsky and her partners were dreaming up Diagnostic
Robotics, Covid-19 did not exist.
They intended to use predictive analytics and artificial
intelligence to reduce the healthcare load on overcrowded emergency rooms by
“directing patients to the most relevant medical setting – the emergency
department, urgent care clinic or remote consultation,” Radinsky tells
ISRAEL21c.
The system was already up and running with several hospitals and
HMOs in Israel when Covid-19 hit. Radinsky and her partners quickly realized
that, with just a few tweaks, the same platform could be used to triage
patients possibly infected with the novel coronavirus.
“A month before the virus hit us here in Israel, we already
decided to adapt our existing systems to track its spread in the country. For
the past month and a half, we have been working day and night to put the
finishing touches on a digital platform that is a one-stop shop for managing
the disease,” Radinsky says.
The system, dubbed COVID360, is now integrated with all four of
Israel’s HMOs and the Magen David Adom system – all for free.
The data collection starts with a link to an anonymous
questionnaire, available in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and Spanish.
Recipients are asked to respond daily.
For doctors and HMOs, a special dashboard enables remote
monitoring and risk assessment.
Sample Questions
Among the questions asked: “Have you provided face-to-face service
to more than 10 people in the past two weeks?” “Do you have one or more of the
following pre-existing conditions?” and “Did you measure your temperature over
the last 24 hours?”
COVID360 incorporates additional valuable data sources, such as
travel between cities, population density and the distance between areas that
can help identify how one city will influence another.
Data on the history of morbidity by region is provided by the
Ministry of Health. While the questionnaire doesn’t collect any identifying
details, such as names or telephone numbers, it does ask users to list what
street they live on.
Perhaps the most dramatic visual coming out of the COVID360 system
is a “heat map” showing where Covid-19 infections are most prevalent. This
helps the Ministry of Health decide which areas should go into lockdown.
By using historical data, Diagnostic Robotics was also able to
determine that the source of the mass infection in the city of Bnei Brak was
due to large gatherings for the Jewish holiday of Purim and not the improvised
prayer services that took place in the weeks afterward.
When Will it End?
One thing Diagnostic Robotics can’t predict is when the pandemic
will end.
“At the moment, we only have full information for the past two
weeks,” she told the Israeli business journal Globes. “In order to predict two weeks ahead,
we need at least five times this window – in other words going back ten weeks.”
COVID360 also can describe Covid-19 disease progression. By
surveying millions of Israelis, the system has confirmed that there is an
average gap of four to five days between infection and the appearance of
symptoms; that the loss of taste and smell can appear as far as 30 days after
the start of infection; and that some patients never develop a fever.
Diagnostic Robotics’ system is operating in Israel and, as of this
week, in cooperation with India’s Odisha Covid-19 triage and monitoring
platform. Radinsky hints at additional implementations in the works.
“If anybody needs help, and our system can be helpful for them, we
will be helping them,” she says.
Comments
Post a Comment