Since the start of the project, we have built two AI models to detect Covid on Chest CT scans and another model to determine the severity of Covid in a patient. We have rebuilt our existing single AI product engine (capable of detecting lung cancer nodules on Chest CT’s) to a multiple AI product engine, ready to link the Covid AI models to the new engine.
As the pandemic was creating all kind of uncertainties for the health system, we decided to develop our AI models in parallel with rebuilding the engine. This reduced the development horizon from 2-3 years down to 15 months. We collected the scans of Covid patients in a joint effort with hospitals all over Europe and named the project ICOVAI. It took us longer than estimated to collect the scans and we had to build an annotator tool in order to be able to correctly annotate the scans. However, the model, was ready for clinical validation testing by the end of 2020 (9 months development time). We contracted NKI/AVL, a very respected Dutch Health Institute to perform the clinical validation study. This was started in Q1 2021. Although NKI/AVL was extremely positive on the way our severity model could indicate the severity of Covid in patients, the clinical validation study also revealed that the AI model did not distinguish enough with other lung (infection) diseases.
It was our ambition that by the time the model was clinically validated we would install the AI software at 50 sites. All existing sites will be transferred to the new engine by Q2 2021. By the end of June 2021, we have over 50 sites contracted and ready to receive the AI Covid model on the new engine. However, with the negative outcome of our clinical validation study we decided not to launch the product. At 30th of June we informed our customers and all other hospitals that supplied us with scans on the outcome of our project.
