bhagalpur researchers at indian institute of information technology iiit bhagalpur are awaiting the official nod for using their innovative software technology developed to read chest xray films or plates and detect covid19 within a few secondsthe researchers team head and the institutes director arvind choubey and his fellow assistant professor sandip raj told this newspaper on tuesday that the indian council of medical research icmr and union ministry of health and family welfare were looking into this unique research to test run and validate the new technology through which precious time and money of patients in diagnosing covid19 infection will be savedthe artificial intelligence ai based technology which has been christened as covizn and developed in 2020 can read scanned chest xray film or plate as well as high resolution computed tomography hrct or ct scan uploaded to the computer in less than one second prof choubey saidthe icmr has formed a highlevel advisory committee headed by dr randeep guleria director of all india institute of medical sciences new delhi and other medical sciences experts from the council of scientific and industrial research csir to explore the possibility of using covizn software and suggest the modalities as soon as possible he addedchoubey also said the sample testing of the technology was done recently in the presence of a team of doctors and experts at jawaharlal nehru medical college and hospital jlnmch in bhagalpur indira gandhi institute of medical sciences patna and ram manohar lohia hospital delhi the result was 94 to 98 successful the data exhibited 98100 result in diagnosing cases correctly he saidhe claimed that the cost of diagnosis of covid would be less than rs100 through covizn software in comparison to conventional microbiological swab test at present it will also save precious time of two to three days or even more in getting the test results the technology is safe and aims at serving the humanity hopefully the icmr the ministry of health and others will take early action on it he said