On Wednesday, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo's office announced a new self-checker tool for Ocean Staters, designed to help health officials track the spread of the coronavirus in the state as well as provide medical advice to individuals.
Users are first asked to answer a series of questions in a survey regarding symptoms, potential exposures and other risk factors. The self-checker will then provide guidance on whether they should seek medical care, quarantine or isolate. The platform is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
The tool was built by Israeli startup Diagnostic Robotics, whose flagship product is essentially a human-machine hybrid AI diagnostic system.
"What we've been developing for over two and a half years is an AI layer of automation and prediction that we're providing on top of existing health care systems and products," Yonatan Amir, Diagnostic Robotics' founder and CEO, said in an interview with Rhode Island Inno. "To create a comprehensive clinical profile of each patient, our system combines a variety of data sources in real time."
In other applications, Diagnostic Robotics' technology can integrate medical images, vital signs, lab results, text analysis and other patient data to create such profiles. Human medical professionals can then use those profiles to make recommendations for individual patients. The technology has been deployed in emergency rooms, primary care clinics and urgent care centers.
Two months ago, when the coronavirus spilled over into a global pandemic, the startup pivoted to create a triage system unique to COVID-19, Amir said.
"What we're providing is a platform where patients with existing symptoms could go through the same triage process and better understand—based on his symptoms, history or present illness, chronic conditions and so on—how to make a decision," Amir said. "Down the line, we are hoping to provide a dynamic epidemiological map being updated in real time."
Founded in 2017, Diagnostic Robotics has partnered with the Israel Ministry of Health on a program to track coronavirus there, including a full-scale epidemiological map. The partnership with Rhode Island marks the startup's first such program in the United States.
