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Sweden’s national emergency service provider, SOS Alarm, has together with AI startup, Corti, started a collaboration in order to detect COVID-19 hot spots with AI-enabled solutions.
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread throughout global society, it has become essential that all healthcare personnel, particularly first responders in emergency services, have as much assistance as possible.
SOS Alarm, one of the most vital companies in the Swedish healthcare sector, is the nation-wide emergency service provider, powering the 112 emergency number across the country. In February 2020, SOS Alarm announced its partnership with the Danish AI health startup, Corti, revealing that Corti would begin operating in the background of their emergency calls and assisting them with using call information for more modernized emergency call management.
Building on this existing partnership, SOS Alarm has again joined forces with Corti, this time to effectively analyze the spread of the novel coronavirus in Sweden in order to identify potential hot-spots where the virus seems to be increasing at a rapid pace.
Corti’s COVID-19 AI-powered mapping solution will help SOS Alarm analyze the pandemic in more detail than previously possible. The solution will later be able to utilize information from thousands of historical calls to help SOS Alarm call-takers detect, in real-time, whether the caller is at high risk of COVID-19. By following the spread of infection rates, the SOS Alarm will able to see, at a national level, how the outbreak develops over time and identify specific ‘hot-spots’ where cases increase and decrease over time.
“If we see positive results stemming from this project, we see a great opportunity to use Corti in other crisis situations. In fact, we are actively investigating which situations that would be, such as influenza outbreaks or seasonal forest fires. Using such a map will not only help us at SOS Alarm prepare and plan our own resources within the organizations but also help healthcare personnel in primary, emergency, and outpatient care.” Mattias Regnell, Head of Innovation & Research at SOS Alarm.
The information gathered during a crisis such as COVID-19 can also contribute greatly to municipalities, regions, and other authorities so that they can proactively work on reducing the often tough effects on society.
“Over the course of this pandemic, we have seen how important it is for emergency services to have up to date analysis on the spread of COVID-19. We hope for our partnership with SOS Alarm to increase the situational awareness for this crisis, and to prevent any future potential crisis.” Henrik Cullen, Head of Product at Corti
SOS Alarm is already collaborating with Corti to implement AI support in the medical prioritization system that will be used to assess cases at the emergency number 112. The COVID-19 project will start immediately in order to start providing an appropriate analysis of the situation as soon as possible.