The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is conducting a pilot of an artificial intelligence platform that could help predict a COVID-19 patient’s prognosis and address the individual’s treatment needs, Nextgov reported Friday.

“The problem is, given a positive detection of COVID viral test—if someone has a positive test—what is the prognosis? Will the patient need hospitalization? Are they at risk of death, etc.? What will be their needs?” Gil Alterovitz, director of AI at the VA said Thursday at the Genius Machines 2020 Virtual Summit. “The approach was to develop an applied AI model for that using both clinical and nonclinical information.”

A team at VA began working on the AI tool in early spring using collected data from over 11,000 patients. The team then examined how patients’ blood pressure, heart rate, pre-existing conditions and other health factors affect their mortality and recovery rates.

“It’s being used already operationally,” Alterovitz, head of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII) at VA, said of the new AI tool. “And we’re going to be now working with other medical sites to see how this can be used across the country in different settings, as well.”

ArchIntel recently held its Artificial Intelligence in Competitive Intelligence Forum on Thursday, Oct. 22nd featuring August Jackson, senior director of Market and Competitive Intelligence with Deltek, as the event moderator.

Visit ArchIntel Events to watch the full event for yourself to learn how notable leaders are working to maintain a competitive advantage through integrating emerging technologies into their organizations and offerings.

The U.S. Army tested approximately 30 technologies during the Network Modernization Experiment 2020 and reported breakthroughs on satellite communications, millimeter waveforms and radio resiliency as part of the next set of tactical network tools called Capability Set ’23, C4ISRNET reported Friday.

The C5ISR Center of the service’s Combat Capability Development Command conducted the NetModX field experiment from July 20 through Oct. 2 at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and one of the technologies tested for Capability Set ’23 is a Silvus-built radio.

The radio team at the C5ISR Center integrated power control and interference avoidance capabilities into the Silvus radio as part of the experiment. One of the satcom capabilities tested by the service during NetModX is the interference cancelation technology.

“Interference cancellation has very advanced algorithms that are actually able to separate the interference from the original signal of interest, the signal that you want to receive, clean it up and present that back at the sanctuary hub, thus allowing the communication to continue going on even though you’re being jammed by an adversary,” said Jeremy Zwirn, an electronics engineer for the C5ISR Center’s satcom resiliency team.

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) are collaborating on efforts to use AI algorithms to establish new medical diagnostic techniques and improve the management of health data.

As part of the Predictive Health effort, the two Department of Defense (DoD) entities recently developed an augmented reality microscope (ARM) that uses AI algorithms to detect specific cancer cell types through cloud-based digital images, JAIC said Wednesday

The team is slated to deploy the first ARM device to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, before delivering more of the microscopes to military treatment facilities worldwide.

In addition to ARM, JAIC’s Warfighter Health Mission Initiative and DIU are also working to develop an application programming interface that leverages AI algorithms and digital data cards to improve the management of the DoD’s historical medical data.

The effort is envisioned to support the Defense Health Agency’s (DHA) Joint Pathology Center, which manages over 55 million pathology specimen slides and is working to digitize its repository in Silver Spring, Maryland.

JAIC’s Warfighter Health team plans to collaborate with other stakeholders to develop algorithms and use the digitized samples to support AI-driven cancer detection approaches.

DIU and JAIC expect to continue work on the Predictive Health initiative as the Warfighter Health team prepares to transition to JAIC’s Joint Common Foundation (JCF) development platform.

In case you missed ArchIntel’s Artificial Intelligence in Competitive Intelligence Forum on Thursday, you can rewatch the full event by registering on ArchIntel Events.

Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations and a 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, said the U.S. Space Force is in the final stages of planning a technology research-focused field command, Space News reported Thursday.

The service branch's future Space Systems Command would lead and manage efforts to design, develop and procure satellites and other space technologies. Raymond said Thursday at a virtual event that USSF expects to establish the command in spring next year. A three-star general would lead the future command.

The Air Force Association, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association co-organized the event where Raymond spoke. Space Systems Command would follow the recently launched Space Operations Command as part of USSF's planned field command trio. 

Raymond previously announced plans to establish a digital service within USSF to bolster the force's security and economic stability.

QTS Realty Trust has opened a new 495 thousand gross square foot mega data center on its Atlanta Metro campus, the company reported on Friday. QTS Atlanta-Metro Data Center 2 (DC2) features 240 thousand square feet of data hall space and 72 megawatts of power capacity.

“We are opening our new mega data center on our Atlanta Metro campus to expand our growth opportunity with hyperscale, large enterprise and government organizations in the Southeast,” said Chad Williams, CEO, QTS. “Atlanta Metro DC2 represents QTS’ third mega data center in the greater Atlanta area, further solidifying our presence as Atlanta’s market leader.”

DC2 has been designed for large-scale enterprise colocation and hyperscale deployments, leveraging QTS’ innovative standardized Freedom Building design and specifications. The company utilized its de-risked approach for development and capital allocation.

The data center will enable QTS to deliver the lowest cost of power to its customers in the southeast data center market at less than 4 cents per kilowatt hour. QTS’ campus is expected to support more than 275 megawatts of power capacity.

QTS’ Atlanta-Metro data center has approximately 250 embedded customers. The campus will offer networking, including more than two thousand cross connects supported by diverse connectivity for cloud and hybrid colocation, direct fiber access to a multitude of carriers, access to multiple fiber routes and IP providers, multiple dark and lit fiber providers, redundant transport paths and access to cloud providers.

QTS previously signed anchor tenant leases with two existing strategic hyperscale customers, which amounted to more than 16 megawatts at the new Atlanta-Metro DC2 site. These customers chose to expand with QTS based on QTS’ operational maturity, speed to market and commitment to a premium customer experience.