These 3 scientific developments could help combat the coronavirus pandemic

Scientists remain hard at work in their efforts to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic and help alleviate the stress on health care systems.

At Stanford University, researchers are hoping to integrate already-on-the-market artificial intelligence called the Deterioration Index that can help doctors predict which coronavirus patients may need escalated care, thus allowing health care workers to spend less time analyzing charts and make treatment decisions more quickly, Stat News reports.

The AI analyzes vital signs, lab test results, medications, and medical history, then rates on a scale of 0 to 100 how high the risk is that a patient's condition deteriorates. The model is used in nearly 50 health systems already, but Stanford wants to make sure it works accurately for COVID-19 patients, as well, since it's a new disease the system wasn't intended to analyze.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In other news, two U.S. companies — BD and BioMedomics — launched a rapid antibody test that can detect if a person has present or past exposure to COVID-19 in as little as 15 minutes. Antibody tests could prove key for better understanding how widespread the pandemic is, and at what stage the world is at, because current coronavirus tests can't determine if a person has already recovered. Most importantly, they could help determine whether some health care workers can treat patients without concern of contracting the virus themselves, as well as allow some people who may have already built up immunity to return to their normal lives.

That doesn't mean firms are halting production of normal diagnostic tests, of course. The Boston Globe reports that researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are are working on a test that can deliver results in less than 15 minutes, which will hopefully add to the growing number of point-of-care tests hitting the market.