AI has been put to a myriad of uses to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, but it can also help to protect the healthcare workers on the frontlines of the battle.

That’s according to Mary Tolan, co-founder and managing partner of Chicago Pacific Founders, a healthcare financing firm, who argues that because first responders and hospital staff are putting their own wellbeing on the line to fight COVID-19, communities need to use every tool at their disposal to protecting them, including, and particularly, AI.

She cites a report from NPR that noted the number of healthcare workers who “say they’re exhausted and burning out from the stress of treating a stream of critically ill patients in an increasingly overstretched health care system. “Many are questioning how long they can risk their own health […] In many hospitals, the pandemic has transformed emergency rooms and upended protocols and precautions that workers previously took for granted.”

As Tolan sees it, therefore, one primary goal should be “to use AI tools to allocate human resources better while still protecting patients and staff.”  She points to a screening system recently deployed at Tampa General Hospital in Florida that monitors entryway cameras and conducts facial thermal scans.

“If the system flags any feverish symptoms such as sweat or discoloration, it can notify healthcare staff and prompt immediate intervention,” she says.

Other tech companies have “similar remote diagnostic and alert tools in facilities across the globe,” Tolan says, and their goal is universally two-fold: “to prevent the spread of infection and provide support to overworked personnel.”

In many ways, the challenge presented by the pandemic can be boiled down to a double-edged problem: the need to make rapid diagnoses accompanied by effective treatment, and to do so without putting healthcare workers at undue risk.

“With AI,” Tolan argues, “hospitals can automate some steps of the testing process, cutting down on the time and effort needed to process test results. . . . However, the applications of AI diagnostics aren’t limited to testing alone. Some have also used artificial intelligence to support population management in overstretched hospitals.

In the end, says Tolan, “(n)o AI innovation — no matter how brilliant or helpful — will fix our resources shortfall. There is no question that healthcare providers need more PPE and support, or that they need it immediately. However, the benefits that AI provides to screen and patient management efforts are evident. It seems reasonable that we at least consider the weight the deployment of such tools could remove from our exhausted front-liners’ shoulders.”