Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is making use of artificial intelligence to forecast demand for ventilators and intensive care beds during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Yesterday, the NHS started testing the COVID 19 Capacity Planning and Analysis System (CPAS) at four hospitals in the United Kingdom. CPAS is a predictive system the makes use of machine learning to help the NHS better allocate resources during the coronavirus crisis.
By learning and improving through experience, without having to be explicitly programmed, CPAS could tell hospitals in advance when it expects intensive care beds to reach capacity. This would give the hospital time to source additional resources or reroute patients to nearby facilities.
If the COVID 19 Capacity Planning and Analysis System proves effective at the four initial hospitals, the NHS will consider rolling it out across the United Kingdom. Given the versatility of the Capacity Planning and Analysis System, NHS Digital could export the technology to other countries.
