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Albert Hsiao, M.D., Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) health system had been working for 18 months on anartificial intelligence program designed to help doctors identify pneumonia on a chest X-ray.

When thecoronavirushit the U.S., they decided to see what it could do.

The researchers quickly deployed the application, which dots X-ray images with spots of color where there may be lung damage or other signs of pneumonia. It has now been applied to more than 6,000 chest X-rays, and its providing some value in diagnosis, said Hsiao, director of UCSDs augmented imaging and artificial intelligence data analytics laboratory.

His team is one of several around the country that has pushed AI programs developed in a calmer time into the COVID-19 crisis to perform tasks like deciding which patients face the greatest risk of complications and which can be safely channeled into lower-intensity care.

The machine-learning programs scroll through millions of pieces of data to detect patterns that may be hard for clinicians to discern. Yet few of the algorithms have been rigorously tested against standard procedures. So while they often appear helpful, rolling out the programs in the midst of a pandemic could be confusing to doctors or even dangerous for patients, some AI experts warn.

AI is being used for things that are questionable right now, said Eric Topol, M.D., director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and author of several books on health IT.

Topol singled out a system created by Epic, a major vendor of electronic health records software, that predicts which coronavirus patients may become critically ill. Using the tool before it has been validated is pandemic exceptionalism, he said.

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Epic said the companys model had been validated with data from more 16,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in 21 healthcare organizations. No research on the tool has been published, but, in any case, it was developed to help clinicians make treatment decisions and is not a substitute for their judgment, said James Hickman, a software developer on Epics cognitive computing team.

Others see the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to learn about the value of AI tools.

My intuition is its a little bit of the good, bad and ugly, said Eric Perakslis, Ph.D., a data science fellow at Duke University and former chief information officer at the Food and Drug Administration. Research in this setting is important.

Nearly $2 billion poured into companies touting advancements in healthcare AI in 2019. Investments in the first quarter of 2020 totaled $635 million, up from $155 million in the first quarter of 2019, according to digital health technology funderRock Health.

At least three healthcare AI technology companies have made funding deals specific to the COVID-19 crisis, including Vida Diagnostics, an AI-powered lung-imaging analysis company, according to Rock Health.

Overall, AIs implementation in everyday clinical care is less common than hype over the technology would suggest. Yet the coronavirus crisis has inspired some hospital systems to accelerate promising applications.

UCSD sped up its AI imaging project, rolling it out in only two weeks.

Hsiaos project, with research funding from Amazon Web Services, the University of California and the National Science Foundation, runs every chest X-ray taken at its hospital through an AI algorithm. While no data on the implementation has been published yet, doctors report that the tool influences their clinical decision-making about a third of the time, said Christopher Longhurst, M.D., UCSD Healths chief information officer.

The results to date are very encouraging, and were not seeing any unintended consequences, he said. Anecdotally, were feeling like its helpful, not hurtful.

RELATED:Headlines have touted AI over docs in reading medical images. New review finds evidence is limited

AI has advanced further in imaging than other areas of clinical medicine because radiological images have tons of data for algorithms to process, and more data makes the programs more effective, said Longhurst.

But while AI specialists have tried to get AI to do things like predict sepsis and acute respiratory distressresearchers at Johns Hopkins University recently won a National Science Foundation grantto use it to predict heart damage in COVID-19 patientsit has been easier to plug it into less risky areas such as hospital logistics.

In New York City, two major hospital systems are using AI-enabled algorithms to help them decide when and how patients should move into another phase of care or be sent home.

AtMount Sinai Health System, an artificial intelligence algorithm pinpoints which patients might be ready to be discharged from the hospital within 72 hours, said Robbie Freeman, vice president of clinical innovation at Mount Sinai. Freeman described the AIs suggestion as a conversation starter, meant to help assist clinicians working on patient cases decide what to do. AI isnt making the decisions.

NYU Langone Health has developed a similar AI model. It predicts whether a COVID-19 patient entering the hospital will suffer adverse events within the next four days, said Yindalon Aphinyanaphongs, M.D., Ph.D., who leads NYU Langones predictive analytics team.

The model will be run in a four- to six-week trial with patients randomized into two groups: one whose doctors will receive the alerts, and another whose doctors will not. The algorithm should help doctors generate a list of things that may predict whether patients are at risk for complications after theyre admitted to the hospital, Aphinyanaphongs said.

RELATED:Microsoft launches $40M AI for Health program to accelerate medical research

Some health systems are leery of rolling out a technology that requires clinical validation in the middle of a pandemic. Others say they didnt need AI to deal with the coronavirus.

Stanford Health Careis not using AI to manage hospitalized patients with COVID-19, saidRon Li, M.D., the centers medical informatics director for AI clinical integration. The San Francisco Bay Area hasnt seen the expected surge of patientswho would have provided the mass of data needed to make sure AI works on a population, he said.

Outside the hospital, AI-enabled risk factor modeling is being used to help health systems track patients who arent infected with the coronavirus but might be susceptible to complications if they contract COVID-19.

At Scripps Health in San Diego, clinicians are stratifying patients to assess their risk of getting COVID-19 and experiencing severe symptoms using a risk-scoring model that considers factors like age, chronic conditions and recent hospital visits. When a patient scores 7 or higher, a triage nurse reaches out with information about the coronavirus and may schedule an appointment.

Though emergencies provide unique opportunities to try out advanced tools, its essential for health systems to ensure doctors are comfortable with them, and to use the tools cautiously, with extensive testing and validation, Topol said.

When people are in the heat of battle and overstretched, it would be great to have an algorithm to support them, he said. We just have to make sure the algorithm and the AI tool isnt misleading, because lives are at stake here.

ThisKHNstory first published onCalifornia Healthline, a service of theCalifornia Health Care Foundation.Kaiser Health Newsis a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Coronavirus tests the value of artificial intelligence in medicine - FierceHealthcare

Consumers are seeing and feeling the impact of COVID-19 supply chain interruptions and delays in their everyday lives, from shortages of paper goods and cleaning supplies in grocery stores, to rising prices for beef and poultry.

For specialized industries such as health care and aerospace, however, the stakes of supply chain interruptions and service failures have perhaps never been higher. So far the traditional hub-and-spoke time-critical logistics industry has largely struggled to adapt, while newer technology-enabled models in the industry are showing significant promise to perform in a crisis.

Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms in particular have shown remarkable resilience during the COVID-19 crisis and the ability to quickly pivot shipments with minimal delays and service failures. California-based Airspace Technologies was one of the first logistics providers in the time-critical space to implement a breakthrough AI-powered platform that they say has enabled them to swiftly adjust operations without interruptions to their 24/7, 365-days-a-year services.

Airspace was built with moments like these in mind. It was designed to perform in a crisis when time is of the essence and lives and entire industries are quite literally on the line, said Airspace Technologies CEO and co-founder Nick Bulcao.

With years of experience specializing in urgent medical deliveries, such as organs for transplant, as well as aerospace parts for downed aircraft, Airspace says they have noticed a significant impact on their business as elective surgeries are delayed and less aircraft are flying. But the automated, AI-driven software that is the heartbeat of their operations has made adjusting to the new realities of the industry immensely more manageable.

With lives on the line, Airspace moved quickly to set up new shipment networks and routes each day to begin transporting urgently needed COVID-19 test kits, blood and plasma units, and vital organs for transplant to get where they need to go. Their fully transparent, automated software platform also allows minute-by-minute real-time tracking of deliveries, so hospitals and labs know exactly where kits or urgent supplies are and when they will arrive.

Airspace is currently making between 250 and 300 health care-related deliveries each day, and has transported as many as 30 organs in just one week.

The companys aerospace parts delivery business has had its own heroic moments during the COVID-19 crisis. An independent delivery driver for Airspace in the Bay Area recounted a harrowing incident last month in which he was asked to make a critical aerospace part delivery not to an airport, but to Stanford University Medical Center instead. Sensing the urgency of the moment, the driver immediately retrieved the part and made his way to the hospital.

Arriving two hours earlier than expected, I called my point of contact, who was still over an hour away. After some coordination with the engineer and hospital staff, I handed over the critical part for the medevac helicopter stranded on the hospital roof to a nurse instead helping get the lifesaving equipment back in the air ahead of schedule, said Bryan Sperry, 61, the driver.

Airspace says software also allowed them to protect workers by rapidly transitioning their team to fully remote operations across the United States.

The key was doing so with zero disruption to our round-the-clock operations and with full capabilities still in place, said Ryan Rusnak, Airspace co-founder and chief technology officer. After some planning, it took the team less than 36 hours to make a complete transition. Theyre now remotely continuing to provide the seamless, end-to-end experience our customers expect.

The transition and dramatic decline in passenger flights has not been without its challenges, though. Fewer passenger flights means fewer routing options, often accompanied by delays that can be costly for customers. That is where the power of the AI platform can often make the biggest difference, Airspace says.

One of the key features of their AI software is an automated delay declaration, which allows the operations team to quickly pivot to the next optimal routing if an order experiences a flight delay even in the middle of a trip. For example, on one day in March this year, amid more than 100 flight cancellations at the Las Vegas airport, Airspaces technology allowed the company to reduce disruption to critical deliveries to less than 38-minute average delays, while over 60% of orders there experienced no delays at all.

The rapidly changing dynamics as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have created enormous challenges across industries and supply chains, but the power of AI to keep industry and lifesaving goods and services moving in a crisis has shown a positive path toward maintaining affordability, speed, reliability and transparency in urgent logistics.

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How artificial intelligence is keeping time-critical shipments on track during pandemic - FreightWaves

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today announced that it has reduced software issue resolution times by 23% using its new patent pending Rimini Street Artificial Intelligence Support Applications (AI Applications), and that to date the AI Applications have won two awards for innovation and achievement in customer service. The new AI Applications are a result of Rimini Streets continued investment in optimizing support processes and ensuring global service delivery outcomes at scale.

Delivering a Better Client Experience Through Artificial Intelligence

The Rimini Street Artificial Intelligence Support Applications were developed by Rimini Streets Global Service Delivery Innovation Team, whose mission is to invent innovative solutions that further enhance a clients overall service experience. Built using open source technologies, the AI Applications can be integrated into support processes along with other new AI Applications when they become available.

The AI Applications provide specific, unique data insights and intelligence to seamlessly accelerate better client service and support outcomes. Initial AI Applications include:

The AI Applications are built on Rimini Streets Artificial Intelligence Platform which includes infrastructure, tools, algorithms and data used to build, train and run the AI Applications that are always learning to translate information into actionable insights that enable better service delivery.

Rimini Streets AI Applications have already delivered substantial service benefits to clients, including accelerating case resolution times by an average of 23% and providing an even faster, more efficient case resolution process than previously experienced.

Rimini Street showed us what they were doing with AI early on and how they were using this advanced platform in their daily support operations; we are now personally experiencing the benefits of this platform including faster time to resolution for our support issues, said Jay Fisher, CIO, BrandSafway. We initiated our partnership with Rimini Street over five years ago, and as our experiences have been positive, we have expanded our support to include other applications. The Company continues to be a great partner and trusted adviser, helping us meet the different challenges of maintaining our enterprise software system while delivering quality support and helping us improve our business outcomes.

Building on Rimini Streets Award-Winning Support Delivery Model

The Rimini Street AI Support Applications have already won two awards a Stevie Sales and Customer Service Award for Innovation in Customer Service and a Stevie American Business Award for Achievement in Customer Satisfaction and build on the Companys successful, award-winning support delivery model. The Companys Global Service Delivery team is comprised of more than 600 full-time, highly experienced software support engineers based in 17 countries, providing 24/7/365 coverage. When a client switches to Rimini Street support, they are assigned a Primary Support Engineer (PSE) with an average of 15 years experience in their particular software system, who is backed by a team of functional and technical experts. In addition, the Company leads the support industry with its service level agreement (SLA) of 15-minute response times for Priority 1 critical cases, and 30 minutes for Priority 2 cases, and consistently achieves scores of 4.8 out of 5.0 (where 5.0 is excellent) on its client satisfaction surveys.

The Rimini Street AI Support Applications leverage what industry analysts refer to as a pragmatic AI approach, which is designed to enhance the human connection versus automation that replaces human interaction in the customer service process, such as chatbots to manage inquiries. The AI Applications solve real-world challenges using machine learning and natural language processing technologies, each with a specific function as it relates to customer service. The work done by the AI Applications happens seamlessly in the background and does not require any action by the client.

Our vision for Rimini Streets AI Support Applications is to deliver an even more proactive and responsive support program that continually resets the bar for excellence in enterprise software support, said Brian Slepko, executive vice president, Global Service Delivery, Rimini Street. Rimini Street is making the investments required to ensure optimized client outcomes globally at scale. This latest achievement from Rimini Streets Global Service Delivery Innovation Team underscores the value of our focus on support innovation and the mission to provide clients with the right support engineering team, at the right time, in the right geography to deliver the right solution.

About Rimini Street, Inc.

Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner. The Company offers premium, ultra-responsive and integrated application management and support services that enable enterprise software licensees to save significant costs, free up resources for innovation and achieve better business outcomes. Nearly 2,100 global Fortune 500, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries rely on Rimini Street as their trusted application enterprise software products and services provider. To learn more, please visit http://www.riministreet.com, follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn. (IR-RMNI)

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this communication are not historical facts but are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as may, should, would, plan, intend, anticipate, believe, estimate, predict, potential, seem, seek, continue, future, will, expect, outlook or other similar words, phrases or expressions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our expectations of future events, future opportunities, global expansion and other growth initiatives and our investments in such initiatives. These statements are based on various assumptions and on the current expectations of management and are not predictions of actual performance, nor are these statements of historical facts. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties regarding Rimini Streets business, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the unknown duration and economic, operational and financial impacts on our business of the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions taken by governmental authorities, clients or others in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; catastrophic events that disrupt our business or that of our current and prospective clients; changes in the business environment in which Rimini Street operates, including inflation and interest rates, and general financial, economic, regulatory and political conditions affecting the industry in which Rimini Street operates; adverse developments in pending litigation or in the government inquiry or any new litigation; our need and ability to raise additional equity or debt financing on favorable terms and our ability to generate cash flows from operations to help fund increased investment in our growth initiatives; the sufficiency of our cash and cash equivalents to meet our liquidity requirements; the terms and impact of our outstanding 13.00% Series A Preferred Stock; changes in taxes, laws and regulations; competitive product and pricing activity; difficulties of managing growth profitably; the customer adoption of our recently introduced products and services, including our Application Management Services (AMS), Rimini Street Advanced Database Security, and services for Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud products, in addition to other products and services we expect to introduce in the near future; the loss of one or more members of Rimini Streets management team; uncertainty as to the long-term value of Rimini Streets equity securities; and those discussed under the heading Risk Factors in Rimini Streets Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on May 7, 2020, and as updated from time to time by Rimini Streets future Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other filings by Rimini Street with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, forward-looking statements provide Rimini Streets expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this communication. Rimini Street anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause Rimini Streets assessments to change. However, while Rimini Street may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Rimini Street specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Rimini Streets assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this communication.

2020 Rimini Street, Inc. All rights reserved. Rimini Street is a registered trademark of Rimini Street, Inc. in the United States and other countries, and Rimini Street, the Rimini Street logo, and combinations thereof, and other marks marked by TM are trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, and unless otherwise specified, Rimini Street claims no affiliation, endorsement, or association with any such trademark holder or other companies referenced herein.

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Rimini Street Speeds Software Issue Resolution by 23% with New Artificial Intelligence Applications - Business Wire