The researcher at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and physician at the Hospital del Mar Emergency Service, Max Hardy-Werbin, as well as the bioinformatician at the Pathological Anatomy Service of the same hospital, Joan Gibert, have led the development of a new support tool for the diagnosis of patients with suspected infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. This tool developed thanks to the collaboration of different areas and services of the Hospital del Mar and the IMIM, uses Artificial Intelligence to help medical personnel diagnose, from chest X-rays, if the patient is positive for COVID-19.

For the development of the project, more than 6,000 chest radiographs of patients from Hospital del Mar have been used, some positive for COVID-19, others not; but all of them, reported by radiologists. Thanks to the large sample of radiographs, the level of reliability of the tool is more or less 80%. In addition, the fact that this new tool has been trained with its own samples increases its adaptation to the reality of Hospital del Mar.

The project is at the implementation phase, so it is being incorporated into the computer system of all the Parc de Salut Mar centers; healthcare professionals have quick and easy access to it.