A new zero-contact speech recognition system using artificial intelligence (AI) technology would help medical staff wearing personal protective equipment use computers, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital said on Wednesday.
The hospital developed the system in collaboration with Taiwan AI Labs after it had problems dealing with a surge in people seeking services at the hospital during a domestic COVID-19 outbreak that started in May, it said.
The hospital realized that staff wearing the protective equipment had problems when performing certain tasks, such as updating people’s medical records, the hospital said.
While usually updating the records immediately when attending to a patient, doctors now took notes afterwards, which increased the risk of error, it said.
Especially staff at screening stations, who are required to wear protective suits, masks and gloves, found it difficult to accurately type on a keyboard, it added.
After hearing of the problems, Taiwan AI Labs reached out to the hospital’s emergency medicine department director, Chiu Yi-min (邱義閔), suggesting a system using AI-based speech recognition technology, the hospital said.
The newly installed system would allow staff to make changes to medical files in real time and integrate data from different sources in the hospital’s records, it said.
Hospital superintendent Wang Chih-hsi (王植熙) said that the cooperation came at the right time, as the hospital had just started implementing Big Data and AI-based technologies to provide better medical services.
The hospital would continue to collaborate with Taiwan AI Labs to train the speech recognition AI, with the aim that the technology understands all relevant details of a dialogue between doctor and patient, Wang said.
Hopefully the system can help doctors make diagnoses and assess the severity of patients’ symptoms, he said.
Taiwan AI Labs said it has since May invested considerably in COVID-19-related technology, including a social distancing app and a diagnosis software.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led