As it is known from the international experience with COVID-19 diagnostics, the PCR test has quite limited accuracy and a long processing time. Radiology diagnostics became the frontline area in the fight with the pandemic: sensitivity of computed tomography is around 98%.

The Moscow Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine (CDT), under the leadership of Prof. Morozov, Chief Regional Radiology Officer of Moscow, successfully developed common operation principles of radiology departments that applied to all medical facilities, including public, private, and federal, and would allow to diagnose COVID-19 efficiently and promptly.

The infrastructure of Moscow radiology diagnostic services was prepared in advance in 2012-2018. IT provision was arranged, and city clinics were provided with CT scanners. Medical facilities connected about 1000 devices to the Unified Radiological Information Service (URIS). This service conducts a cycle of diagnostic study in a single digital space. Radiologists' work was organized remotely.
The CDT prepared clinical recommendations for the organization process of scanning, separation of patient flows, and division of functional space of radiology departments into "green" and "red" zones. All these measures were taken to prevent the spread of the infectious disease. The CDT launched operation of the Moscow Reference Center, and introduced artificial intelligence technologies into radiologists' workflow, etc. More details are below.

Outpatient CT centers

The Moscow government, together with the CDT, decided to urgently launch a network of outpatient CT centers (OCTC) based on city clinics in order to link patients who were treated at home with hospitals, and to provide them with available diagnostics. Also, the goals of this innovation were to reduce workload on medical facilities under the conditions of rapidly spreading disease, and to reduce mortality rates from COVID-19.

OCTCs operate on the base of outpatient facilities around the clock and perform comprehensive examination of patients providing CT scans, pulse-oximetry, ECG, examination by a physician, drawing blood for analysis, and taking swabs for PCR. Professor Morozov reported the following statistics: "In Moscow, 48 outpatient CT centers operate around the clock. From April 13th till June 20th, more than 170,000 chest CT scans were performed, more than 82,000 cases of pneumonia with COVID-19 features were detected (50% of the total number of chest CT scans). All cases of COVID-19 pneumonia have the following distribution by the degree of detected findings: CT-1 (mild) - more than 49,000 cases (60% of detected COVID-19 pneumonia); CT-2 (moderate) -more than 24,000 (29% of detected COVID-19 pneumonia); CT-3 (severe) - more than 8,000 (10% of detected COVID-19 pneumonia); CT-4 (critical) - more than 750 (1% of detected COVID-19 pneumonia)". In addition to the above, the CDT assisted in the rapid launch of CT rooms in restructured hospitals to combat COVID-19.

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