Covid 19 update: 11 December 2020 11 Dec 2020 A round-up of this week's coronavirus-related news and countermeasures from the photonics industry. For Dr Mary-Anne Hartley, a medical doctor and researcher in EPFLâs Intelligent Global Health group (iGH), this past year has been relentless: âItâs not a relaxing time to study infectious diseases,â she said. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Hartleyâs research team has been working with nearby Swiss university hospitals on two major projects. Using artificial intelligence, they have developed algorithms that, with data from ultrasound images and auscultation (chest/lung) sounds, can accurately diagnose the novel coronavirus in patients and predict how ill they are likely to become.