UK tech start-up Deeper Insights launches free COVID-19 research discovery app for medical professionals

May 27 2019, London, United Kingdom: UK-based AI and analytics firm Deeper Insights has launched a free research discovery platform to help medical professionals access the latest research on COVID-19 to further their knowledge and help in the critical search for potential treatments and vaccines.

The Covid Insights app enables researchers, physicians and doctors to quickly and easily search tens of thousands of published research papers on COVID-19; which is one of the biggest explosions of scientific literature ever seen with over 52,000 papers published since January 2020.

The medical community is struggling to keep up with this growing torrent of new scientific papers and there is a growing urgency for a trusted solution to help them quickly find the information they need to understand the disease further.

Powered by artificial intelligence, the Covid Insights platform operates as a powerful search engine that stores thousands of research papers on a powerful knowledge graph that uses Machine Learning to enable easy navigation of this vast dataset.

Users can search the knowledge graph by healthcare topic or keyword and see automatic links between symptoms, drugs and other key concepts. This is achieved using neural networks trained on a vast medical corpora known as CORD-19, which are used to identify relevant concepts in the source text. These concepts are then aligned to the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metaontology - a comprehensive standardisation of medical language, use and meaning - for clinical understanding.

The result is a resource that encodes, at the medical level, an understanding of the terms and concepts it contains - and is therefore much more powerful than any traditional, keyword-based search engine.

Users can also access direct links to the original research papers for further reading and sign up for email alerts and weekly newsletters with the latest emerging research specific to their area of interest.

The platform has been backed by a number of high-profile doctors and partners including former BMJ Director Matthew Harker, Critical Care Research Lead for Wales Dr Matt Morgan, and former NHS Director and co-founder of Aequum Health Meuthia Endrojono-Ellis.

It is also supported by the Amazon Partner Network and will be initially promoted through the NHS-approved clinical messaging app Hospify, as well as directly to a UK-wide network of medical professionals.

Deeper Insights founder and CEO Jack Hampson was inspired to develop the platform by his sister's own experience of COVID-19 in her role as a consultant at Kings College Hospital in London.

“Like many doctors currently in the field, my sister has been overwhelmed by the vast amount of disparate, invalidated, and potentially risky information around COVID-19,” explains Jack.

“Deeper Insights has the technology to powerfully machine-read and analyse a vast array of research data. With the help of a consortium of technology and healthcare professionals, we have been able to develop and build the Covid Insights platform in just 5 weeks so that medical professionals can get easy access to the huge volume of valuable data contained within these research papers to aid learning and knowledge sharing.”

Dr Matt Morgan, Critical Care Research Lead for Wales and author of the best-selling medical book 'Critical', commented: “The Covid Insights platform has the potential to change the way that research is discovered, assessed and accessed for the benefits of science and medicine.”

James Flint, CEO of Hospify added: “We can see real benefits for clinical decision support from the Covid Insights platform, so we believe it is both timely and important to promote this to Hospify's network of clinicians, many of whom urgently need trusted sources of information on the frontline.”

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