Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot replace a doctor’s assessment of medical condition of a person infected with deadly virus, but it can definitely help the fraternity with up to 90 per cent certainty to determine whether an uninfected person will die of Covid-19 on catching the infection, a study has said.

Also, once admitted to the hospital with the infection, the computer can predict with 80 per cent accuracy whether the person will need a respirator, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have found. In doing so, the computers can also help decide who should be at the front of the line for the vaccines.

The diseases and health factors that, according to the study, have the most influence on whether a patient ends up on a respirator after being infected with Covid-19 are in the following order of priority: BMI, age, high blood pressure, being male, neurological diseases, COPD, asthma, diabetes and heart disease.

The research can also be used to predict the number of patients in hospitals who will need a respirator and determine who ought to be first in line for a vaccination. The results of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports -- Nature. The result is from a newly published study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Computer Science.

Since the Covid pandemic’s first wave, researchers have been working to develop computer models that can predict, based on disease history and health data, how badly people will be affected by Covid-19.

“We began working on the models to assist hospitals, as, during the first wave, they feared that they did not have enough respirators for intensive care patients. Our new findings could also be used to carefully identify who needs a vaccine,” explains Professor Mads Nielsen of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Computer Science.

The researchers fed a computer programme with health data from 3,944 Danish Covid-19 patients. This trained the computer to recognise patterns and correlations in both patients’ prior illnesses and in their bouts against Covid-19.

“Our results demonstrate, unsurprisingly, that age and BMI are the most decisive parameters for how severely a person will be affected by Covid-19. But the likelihood of dying or ending up on a respirator is also heightened if you are male, have high blood pressure or neurological disease,” explained Mads Nielsen.

“For those affected by one or more of basic parameters, we have found that it may make sense to move them up in the vaccine queue, to avoid any risk of them becoming infected and eventually ending up on a respirator,” said Nielsen.

The research was carried out in collaboration with Rigshospitalet and Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital.