Grant: Project Grant - PA: Pandemic Preparedness and Health Emergencies Research

COVID19 is a continuing pandemic with several challenges that are now expanding to its lesser known long-term effects. Long COVID19 is a term given to the protracted illness that patients of COVID19 continue to experience even amidst their post recovery phase. Difficulty in breathing, weakness, headache, cough, brain fog, and lack of smell are usual symptoms that are observed in Long COVID19. However, people can also suffer from more severe effects that affect the lungs, the heart, muscles and the brain. There is varied data from across the globe. Our CIHR project grant will be exploring what factors are strongly associated with the Long COVID19 patients needing admission in an intensive care unit, or a patients needing a ventilator? Our project will explore whether any differences exist among male and female patients, among people living in different cities, and among people living in different countries. Literature shows that lung involvement is the main feature of Long COVID19 disease, and data has illustrated that findings from computed tomography scans correlate with the outcome of the disease. Using AI we can identify with increased reliability the CT features that are correlated with poor outcome. This project would allow us to quickly detect the Long COVID19, provide better care for the patients, reduce the burden on care givers, reduce the work load on radiologists, and save health care costs. By using data sets from different countries, we are ensuring that our model is generalizable across many countries. As a secondary objective, we will be creating a telehealth radiology registry for the Northern Health patients whose diagnostic images are read at the Vancouver General Hospital after regular service hours, on weekends, and on stat holidays. The teleradiology service impacts the overall health in the First Nations populations as well as general population. We propose to provide service and evaluate the needs of people in NHA and IHA regions.