AI-assisted CT imaging analysis for COVID-19 screening: Building and deploying a medical AI system in four weeks

The sudden outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) increased the diagnostic burden of radiologists. In the time of an epidemic crisis, we hoped artificial intelligence (AI) to help reduce physician workload in regions with the outbreak, and improve the diagnosis accuracy for physicians before they could acquire enough experience with the new disease. Here, we present our experience in building and deploying an AI system that automatically analyzes CT images to detect COVID-19 pneumonia features. Different from conventional medical AI, we were dealing with an epidemic crisis. Working in an interdisciplinary team of over 30 people with medical and / or AI background, geographically distributed in Beijing and Wuhan, we were able to overcome a series of challenges in this particular situation and deploy the system in four weeks. Using 1,136 training cases (723 positives for COVID-19) from five hospitals, we were able to achieve a sensitivity of 0.974 and specificity of 0.922 on the test dataset, which included a variety of pulmonary diseases. Besides, the system automatically highlighted all lesion regions for faster examination. As of today, we have deployed the system in 16 hospitals, and it is performing over 1,300 screenings per day.

Combination of berberine and ciprofloxacin reduces multi-resistant Salmonella strain biofilm formation by depressing mRNA expressions of luxS, rpoE, and ompR

Bacterial biofilms have been demonstrated to be closely related to clinical infections and contribute to drug resistance. Berberine, which is the main component of Coptis chinensis, has been reported to have efficient antibacterial activity. This study aimed to investigate the potential effect of a combination of berberine with ciprofloxacin (CIP) to inhibit Salmonella biofilm formation and its effect on expressions of related genes (rpoE, luxS, and ompR). The fractional inhibitory concentration (FIC) index of the combination of berberine with CIP is 0.75 showing a synergistic antibacterial effect. The biofilm's adhesion rate and growth curve showed that the multi-resistant Salmonella strain had the potential to form a biofilm relative to that of strain CVCC528, and the antibiofilm effects were in a dose-dependent manner. Biofilm microstructures were rarely observed at 1/2 × MIC/FIC concentrations (MIC, minimal inhibition concentration), and the combination had a stronger antibiofilm effect than each of the antimicrobial agents used alone at 1/4 × FIC concentration. LuxS, rpoE, and ompR mRNA expressions were significantly repressed (p < 0.01) at 1/2 × MIC/FIC concentrations, and the berberine and CIP combination repressed mRNA expressions more strongly at the 1/4 × FIC concentration. The results indicate that the combination of berberine and CIP has a synergistic effect and is effective in inhibiting Salmonella biofilm formation via repression of luxS, rpoE, and ompR mRNA expressions.

Discussion on the Cultivation of Medical Students' Medical Humanistic Spirit from the Perspective of Ideological and Political Education / 中国医学伦理学

The ideological and political education of medical students is an indispensable part of medical education.Strengthening the ideological and political education of medical students and cultivating the medical humanistic spirit will contribute to the benign development of the medical industry in the long run.Starting from ideological and political education of medical students,this paper explored the training path of medical students' medical humanistic spirit from the perspective of ideological and political education in the aspects of deepening the content of medical humanistic education,expanding the form of medical humanistic education,perfecting the evaluation of medical humanistic education,and integrating ideological and political education with clinical practice.