The coronavirus pandemic has forced governments all over the world to step up and put stringent measures to detect and contain it. In Kenya, the government is now leveraging on technology to detect the virulent disease.
Today, the Kenya National Hospital (KNH) announced that they have opened a diagnostics and reporting center for the detection of the coronavirus. The chairman of KNH, Nicholas Gumbo announced this in a press event.
UPDATE: Kenyatta National Hospital launches Telemedicine technology for detection of Coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/RDq47oR4UY
— NTV Kenya (@ntvkenya) March 22, 2020
“Today we are here to officially open the Kenyatta National Hospital diagnostics and reporting center, and what we have done ladies and gentlemen is really to demonstrate how we are going to use big data, connectivity and artificial intelligence to aid real-time interpretation of CT-scan images so that we can quickly and knowledge sharing, early diagnosis, and management of all the medical cases that we come across. This is particularly important in this era of COVID-19,” he said. The chairman said that this center is “the first kind in Africa”.
Currently, Kenya has reported 7 positive cases of the COVID-19 disease with no fatalities so far.
During the demonstration of the technology in the center, he said that they were able to communicate with the MTRH hospital in Wuhan and Beijing in China, France, Egypt and 37 other counties in real-time.
One of the main tests in diagnosing COVID-19 is a CT-Scan and that is why such a center is important. they hope to use such technology to share information within minutes and doctors around the world can join through teleconferencing to share ideas and opinions on various issues.
