As the impact of AI in different sectors continue to surprise us, now in Mumbai, Artificial Intelligence has helped to detect Tuberculosis in the last two years, even among those people who didn’t exhibit any kind of symptoms, says the civic doctors. Dr Mangala Gomare, the BMC executive health officer, told the Times of India that, “Around 35% of our confirmed TB cases were incidentally detected, that is, they were part of a non-TB group of patients”. These patients visited the civic healthcare setup for other reasons and underwent an x-ray scan that was monitored by AI software.

As a part of the pilot study, around 1 lakh people underwent AI-powered x-ray scans for diagnosing TB at nine BMC hospitals in 2021 and 2022. BMC, along with qure.ai, a digital start-up company, initiated this study. After scanning lakhs of TB chest x-ray reports, the AI software would spot the x-ray scans that apparently look like TB patches. Dr Gomare said, “AI-based screening is very useful for us to make an early diagnosis even when the patient perhaps has little symptoms”.

Dr Shibu from qure.ai mentioned that studies have shown that around 40% of people who had TB were asymptomatic in their early stages. He added, “unless a patient is asymptomatic, he or she would not be asked to undergo a sputum test, but with AI-supported x-ray scans, one can detect TB at the earliest and ensure treatment starts early”.  

Almost 57,781 patients have undergone the screening of AI-powered x-ray scanners at civic hospitals as a part of the project. 10,225 people were marked as having presumptive TB. However, when around 9,702 were asked to return for the clinical evaluation and sputum collection to confirm the diagnosis, only 2,376 turned up, among which 704 turned out to have confirmed TB diagnosis. The BMC is expected to tie up with other AI companies on a long-term basis with the success of this project which can be referred to as a milestone in the health sector.