One of Israel’s largest health maintenance organizations is using artificial intelligence to help identify which of the 2.4 million people it covers are most at risk of severe covid-19 complications. Maccabi Healthcare Services says the system—which it developed with AI company Medial EarlySign—has already flagged 2% of its members, amounting to around 40,000 people. Once identified, individuals are put on a fast track for testing.

The AI was adapted from an existing system trained to identify people most at risk from the flu, using millions of records from Maccabi going back 27 years. To make its predictions, the system draws on a range of medical data, including a person’s age, BMI, health conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, and previous history of hospital admissions. The AI can trawl through a vast number of records and spot at-risk individuals who might have been missed otherwise. 

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