Huawei Cloud and AI solutions to help South Africa's COVID-19 fight

China-based ICT vendor Huawei, has donated high tech solutions to help South Africa’s fight against COVID-19.

Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize received the company’s donation of four Huawei Cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic systems and four thermal scanning systems at the company’s Johannesburg headquarters.

The AI Cloud solution allows for fast, highly accurate diagnosis of coronavirus pneumonia by analysing CT scans of a patients’ lungs.

Spawn Fan, CEO, Huawei SA said: “Early detection helps to reduce the spread of the virus and to flattening the curve. Speeding up diagnosis time from hours to minutes with a 98% accuracy rate, is a powerful tool for treating, monitoring and management of the disease.”

The system has been implemented successfully in countries like, UK, Mexico, Thailand and China.

Mkhize said AI was an important diagnostic method that would boost his team’s efforts to successfully diagnose and treat infected patients.

He added that using ICT is another important weapon in the arsenal to fight against this virus. We are grateful to Huawei for sharing this innovative system. We look forward to exploring the capabilities of these solutions as we are constantly looking to capacitate our facilities with technology that improves efficiency and accuracy in our health care delivery,” he said.