NOVA School of Science and Technology uses artificial intelligence in the fight against COVID-19

José Barata Oliveira, UNINOVA researcher and professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of NOVA School of Science and Technology, leads one of the selected projects in the scope of the contest "AI 4 COVID-19", promoted by the Foundation for Science and Technology.

The project "COVOICE-19 - A Tool to Support the Identification, Diagnosis and Prognosis of the COVID-19 Disease using Artificial Intelligence and Data Science" was one of the 12 projects recommended for funding in the scope of the Call for R&D Projects "AI 4 COVID-19: Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in Public Administration to strengthen the fight against COVID 19 and future pandemics - 2020". The results of the ongoing research will help find solutions to significantly improve the delivery of services to citizens and businesses, as well as decision-making processes.

The project led by UNINOVA/CTS also involves Ricardo Peres (co-principal investigator) and will be done in cooperation with the Egas Moniz Hospital (Clara Capucho - Speech Unit and Kamal Mansinho and Jaime Nina - Infectology Unit). Clara Capucho and Jaime Nina are also professors at the Medical School of the New University of Lisbon.

The main goal of the COVOICE-19 project is the development of models based on Artificial Intelligence, more precisely Machine Learning, to support activities in the clinical contexts of rapid diagnosis and prognosis in suspected or detected cases of COVID-19, respectively. These activities will be performed based on a set of data collected and aggregated from different sources during the course of the project, taking advantage of the expertise and close collaboration with the team at Egas Moniz Hospital. Additionally, applications will be implemented to operationalize the models developed in order to make them easily usable by both the general population and health system professionals, without the need for prior knowledge in the area of machine learning.

The AI 4 COVID-19 contest is framed within the National Initiative Digital Competencies e.2030, Portugal INCoDe.2030, Axis 5 - Research, and corresponds to the 3rd edition of the program's annual calls for research in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in Public Administration.

Source: FCT NOVA usa inteligência artificial na luta contra o COVID-19