"On a Thursday morning last month, Boniaba Community Health Center in Mali was running a TB screening. There was no doctor in sight. Yet, a mother plagued by coughing got an answer in a matter of seconds: She was positive for TB."
"A few years ago, she'd have been lucky if there was a screening nearby. And still, she'd have had to wait a week or two for a sputum test to be sent to a lab and results to come back. The difference? A mobile x-ray machine and an AI algorithm are detecting TB. (In case you're not familiar with AI terminology this is basically a computer program trained on a whole lot of data.)"
"TB is the world's top infectious disease killer with 3,500 people dying of it each day for an annual total of more than 1.2 million deaths. And the numbers are going up. One of the hurdles in tackling the epidemic has been a global shortage of radiologists to diagnose this bacterial infection that usually affects the lungs."
Mobile x-ray machines combined with AI algorithms can detect TB on-site and provide near-instant results. Previously many patients waited a week or two for sputum tests to be sent to distant labs. TB kills about 3,500 people daily, more than 1.2 million annually, and case numbers are rising. A global shortage of radiologists, sometimes fewer than five per country and concentrated in capitals, limits diagnosis in many low- and middle-income settings. Over 80 low- and middle-income countries are using AI-enabled screening, extending services to nomadic populations and refugee camps where no radiologists are available.
Read at www.npr.org
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