The city of Buenos Aires has developed a system of artificial intelligence that allows detecting the possibility of contagion of coronavirus by coughing audios through WhatsApp, as reported by the Buenos Aires Government. The IATos system, which allows the city to improve the coronavirus testing strategy, was added as an additional function in the so-called Boti, the WhatsApp of the city of Buenos Aires, which is an information and management channel and which last January exceeded the 11 million interactions. As part of the process, to find out if the person has symptoms or if you were a close contact of a confirmed case, the person you can record and send an audio with your cough.
Once the audio is received, IATos analyzes the sound: if it matches the patterns of positive cases, it recommends that the person take the covid-19 test.
For the city, the system thus makes it possible to rescue positive cases that would otherwise they would not have gone to be tested.
IATos was developed by the Secretariat of Innovation and Digital Transformation of the city of Buenos Aires and works from an artificial intelligence neural network which is capable of classifying voice, breathing and cough sounds and is based on machine learning algorithms.
It currently has about 86% effectiveness in prediction, as reported.
Pilot test
In a pilot test, out of a total of 2,687 audios evaluated, IATos recommended testing 554 people. And of those 554 people, 436 were swab positive and 118 were negative.
To train the recognition system of this network, 140,000 audios of people with positive or negative covid-19 diagnoses were collected through Boti, according to the PCR tests carried out in the testing centers of the Government of the city of Buenos Aires.
The labeling of the audios is carried out thanks to and based on the tests, and according to the city, it is the first time such a study has been done in the world, collecting audios openly to the community through Whatsapp, a process that was approved by the Elizalde Hospital Ethics Committee.
The database of positive and negative coughs collected by the Government of the city of Buenos Aires it is the largest in the world and is open domain, it was clarified.
Related news
The IATos is a project that is part of an ongoing investigation, within the framework of the Artificial Intelligence Plan of the city of Buenos Aires, to evaluate the use of innovative tools, such as artificial intelligence, applied to the public sector.
The city has already published the preliminary results of the project and, as indicated, is working on disseminating these results in international publications specialized in medicine.