John P. Mello Jr.
2020年3月24日 上午4：00
苹果用户好奇如果他们现在患有新冠肺炎，他们是否能向数字助手Siri寻求建议。
公司于周天推出了自我筛选功能——允许用户询问，“Siri，我是否患有新冠肺炎？”如果用户有一些症状，例如发烧，干咳，气短等，或者说如果他们接触过新冠病人，siri便会引导用户完成由美国疾病防控中心和美国公共健康服务准备的调查问卷。
如果用户说自己的症状并不会严重威胁到生命，Siri会建议其呆在家中并避免和他人接触，勤洗手，并保持社交距离——也就是说，人与人之间保持六英寸的距离。如果症状持续，Siri会建议用户看医生。
对于极端和有生命危险的例子，Siri会呼叫911 。
这款app并不能探究到诊断方面。
Seth Martin，巴尔的摩约翰霍普金医药大学的以为助理教授说“有很多症状既像是新冠肺炎的症状，又像是其他疾病的症状。”
“做出正确诊断的唯一的方法是检测这些症状是否是由新冠病毒引起的，而一个app并不能做到这一点。”
另外在调查问卷和建议方面，Siri会给应用商店提供有关远程医疗的应用链接，通过这些应用可能能与医疗教授进行病毒方面的咨询。
疾病防控中心和微软团队
在周天，疾病防控中心宣布了它的新冠病毒自测，这是由微软的医疗健康自动程序服务提供的。
聊天机器人旨在筛选出那些不确定是否要寻找新冠病毒医疗健康帮助的美国人。除了问一些基于防控中心准则的医疗问题以外，自动程序还会提供有关信息的链接和当地健康部门的联系方式。然而，除了呆在家中照顾好自己，或在更严重的情况下，拨打911以外，他并没有关于病毒检测或治疗推荐的信息 。
“这是最有用的了”Catherine Troisi，休斯顿公共健康UT学校的一位传染病流行病学家说道。
“有人没有生病但是他们十分担心自己会生病，如果他们没有发烧、干咳或是呼吸不畅的话，这起码会减轻一点他们的焦虑。”
医疗健康自动程序服务旨在解决疫情前线工作者的重大需求。Hadas Bitran，以色列微软医疗健康小组的领导者，和Jean Gabarra，微软医疗人工智能的总指挥，在一片网络推文中提到。
“特别的，我们需要筛查那些有不同程度的感冒或是类似流感的症状——来决定让那些最可能面临疾病危险的人获得有限的医疗资源，情况较安全的人在家中自我照顾——这对忙于应对危机的健康系统来说是个瓶颈期。”他们写道。
微软的医疗健康自动程序服务使用人工智能来筛查病人，并安排医疗人员提供帮助给需要的人，Bitran和Gabarra解释道。
这个自动程序，在微软的蓝色公共云中运作，能为不同的个体组织进行定制化服务。。除了疾病防控中心，医疗健康提供者还使用服务于七个西部州的Providence，服务于四个东南州的Novant Health，以及服务于太平洋西北部的Virginia Mason Health System。
注意你的隐私
Michael Arrigo，一位无国界的HIPAA专家说道，症状检查程序可以从医疗系统和顾客双方之中获益。
有工具可以收集有关流行病的传播数据，但是检查程序所收集的数据需要通过识别信息，因此它并不能追溯回病人个体。
对于消费者而言，检查程序是收集他们个人症状信息数据的方便的工具，同时对于仅有有限的医疗知识的外行人来说，它也是实用的诊断工具。
“方便性和教育是这些检查程序的好处。”Arrigo说道。
它有潜在的好处，在苹果和疾病防控中心的消费者开始使用它们之前，Arrigo给他们推荐更多有关应用的信息。
“这些应用意图是好的，但是他们可能无意造成病人和医生之间的中间者的破坏。”
“因为流行的说法是，感染者要几天的时间才会显现出症状，这些应用软件并不能识别感染人群，可能会导致错误的安全感。”Arrigo补充道。
“如果你想要减轻前线预防的照顾，那么我们需要开诚布公，我们应该多次检测症状，因为症状是需要几天的时间才能显现的。”他说，“在其间，你可能在潜伏期内五一与他人进行了接触。”
Arrigo说，症状检测程序收集的数据表明在联邦法律下的个人健康记录，这是附属于美国健康和公共服务部以及联邦贸易委员会下的法规。
疾病防控中心并没有分享任何提交到新冠病毒自测程序的个人信息给微软，Nextgov报告道，Nextgov是涵盖政府和科技的一个出版物。微软提供自动程序，但疾病防控中心拥有并保持检测工具。
使用常识
一些人基于他们在网上收集的信息自己创造其症状检测程序，Michael Cannon说道，他是华盛顿哥伦比亚特区的公共政策智库卡托机构的健康政策领导人。
权威机构的症状追踪者给大众提供比自我照顾更好的方法。
“正确的做，能减轻人们的恐惧，给人们提供建设性的建议，让人们在家中进行疾病鉴别分类，减轻医疗部门的压力。”Cannon告诉TechNewsWorld。
“人们应该从了解此方面的人那里寻求建议，比如主要医疗机构或政府公共健康机构的传染病专家。”Cannon提醒道。
“就像Dr.Seuss建议的，小心行事。”
人们也应该使用常识，Troisi说，“如果你家中有人诊断出患有新冠肺炎并且你也开始出现症状，而症状检测程序说你不需要进行检测，那么此时你最好忽略它的建议。”
Ask Siri if You Have the Coronavirus
By John P. Mello Jr. Mar 24, 2020 4:00 AM PT
Ask Siri if You Have the Coronavirus | Health | TechNewsWorld
Apple users wondering if they've caught COVID-19 now can ask digital assistant Siri for advice.
The company on Saturday rolled out a self-screening feature that allows users to ask, "Hey Siri, do I have the coronavirus?" Siri then takes them through a questionnaire prepared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Public Health Service to determine if they're exhibiting symptoms of the disease, such as fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath -- or if they've had contact with someone with the virus.
If users indicate their symptoms aren't extremely life-threatening, Siri instructs them to stay at home and avoid contact with other people, wash their hands frequently and thoroughly, and maintain social distancing -- that is, a separation of six feet between people. If the symptoms persist, they're advised to contact a physician.
For extreme and life-threatening cases, Siri recommends a call to 911.
The app doesn't delve into the realm of diagnoses.
"There are a number of symptoms that could be COVID-19 or something else," explained Seth Martin, MD, MHS, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
"The only way to make a real diagnosis is to have testing performed to determine if those symptoms are actually due to COVID-19," he told TechNewsWorld. "An app can't do that."
In addition to the questionnaire and advice, Siri provides App Store links to telehealth applications that could include virtual consultations with medical professionals.
Team CDC and Microsoft
Also on Saturday, the CDC announced its Coronavirus Self-Checker, which is powered by Microsoft's Healthcare Bot service.
The chatbot is designed to screen Americans unsure about seeking medical care for COVID-19. In addition to asking questions based on CDC guidelines, the bot provides links to information and local health department contacts. However, it does not have information about coronavirus testing sites or treatment recommendations, other than to stay at home and take care of yourself -- and in severe cases, dial 911.
"This is most useful for the 'worried well,'" said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston.
"Those are people who are not sick but concerned that they may be," she told TechNewsWorld. "It lets them -- if they're not running a fever, don't have a dry cough, no shortness of breath -- release some of their anxiety."
The Healthcare Bot service is designed to address some of the critical needs of frontline responders to the COVID-19 pandemic, noted Hadas Bitran, group manager at Microsoft Healthcare Israel, and Jean Gabarra, general manager at Microsoft's Health AI, in an online post.
"In particular, the need to screen patients with any number of cold or flu-like symptoms -- to determine who has high enough risk factors to need access to limited medical resources and which people may more safely care for themselves at home -- is a bottleneck that threatens to overwhelm health systems coping with the crisis," they wrote.
Microsoft's Healthcare Bot service uses artificial intelligence to screen patients and free up medical personnel to provide critical care to those who need it, Bitran and Gabarra explained.
The bot, which runs in Microsoft's Azure public cloud, can be customized for the needs of individual organizations. In addition to the CDC, healthcare providers using the service include Providence, which serves seven Western states; Novant Health, serving four states in the Southeast; and Virginia Mason Health System, which serves the pacific Northwest.
Watch Your Privacy
Symptom checkers can benefit both the medical system and consumers, noted Michael Arrigo, a HIPAA expert witness with No World Borders.
The tools can gather valuable epidemiology data about an epidemic. However, data collected by a checker needs to be stripped of identifying information so it can't be traced back to individual patients, he cautioned.
For consumers, the checkers can be a convenient way to obtain data for their personal symptom logs, as well as a useful diagnostic for a layperson with limited medical knowledge.
"Convenience and education are great benefits of these checkers," Arrigo said.
While potentially beneficial, Arrigo recommended that both Apple and the CDC give consumers more information about the apps before they start using them.
"The apps are well-intentioned, but they could have the unintentional consequence of disintermediating the patient from their physician, who is the best source for information," he said.
"Because the prevailing opinions are that symptoms can take several days to appear in an infected person, these apps are not too useful at identifying some infected contagious people and could lead to a false sense of security," Arrigo added.
"If the intent is to relieve a potentially overwhelmed primary care front line of defense, a big disclosure needs to go up front, stating that a consumer should check their symptoms multiple times because symptoms can take several days to appear," he said. "In the interim, you could be unwittingly be exposing others during that incubation period."
Data gathered by the symptom checkers represents personal health records under federal law, which are subject to regulation by the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, noted Arrigo.
The CDC does not share any of the personal information submitted to the Coronavirus Self Checker with Microsoft, reported Nextgov, a publication that covers government and technology. Microsoft provides the bot, but the CDC owns and maintains the checking tool.
Use Common Sense
Some consumers are creating their own symptom checkers based on information they're gathering online, noted Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
Symptom trackers from authoritative sources give consumers a better alternative to the do-it-yourself approach.
"Done properly, they can lessen people's fears, suggest constructive actions people can take, perform at-home triage, and relieve the strain on the health sector," Cannon told TechNewsWorld.
"As always, people should only take health advice from sources who know their stuff, like the infectious disease experts at major health systems or government public health agencies," he cautioned.
"Like Dr. Seuss said, 'Do a lot of spitting out the hot air, and be careful what you swallow,'" Cannon added.
People should also use common sense, said UTHealth's Troisi. "If someone in your house has been diagnosed with coronavirus and you start having symptoms, and the symptom checker says you don't need to be tested, it might be a good idea to ignore that advice.
