Artificial Intelligence Could Help Treat Heart Failure From One Heartbeat

A paper in September 2019 is demonstrating how AI neural networks can now detect heart failure from a single heartbeat. A new AI neural network approach detects heart failure from a single heartbeat with 100% accuracy in a potentially important application for AI in healthcare.

Google (separately and independent from this study) is using its world-leading deep learning to improve the healthcare industry.

As an enabler, Artificial Intelligence has proved to be a boon to transform the healthcare delivery system in terms of predicting disease and offering treatment solutions. But it’s really early detection I think here where it can greatly impact well-being and save human lives.

AI Can Lower Healthcare Costs via Heart Failure Detection

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a chronic progressive condition that affects the pumping power of the heart muscles. Associated with high prevalence, significant mortality rates and sustained healthcare costs, AI can lower medical costs by creating a more efficient detection system.

The congestive heart failure will be identified through analysis of just one raw electrocardiogram (ECG) heartbeat. That’s a surprising skill of AI in one of the most common healthcare issues globally of aging populations.

Published in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control Journal, their research drastically improves existing CHF detection methods typically focused on heart rate variability that, whilst effective, are time-consuming and prone to errors.

Artificial Intelligence has so much potential to impact our healthcare systems, patient-centric care and save lives here.

Led by researchers at the Universities of Surrey, Warwick and Florence, it shows that AI can quickly and accurately identify CHF, improving the efficacy of ECGs.

5 Million in the U.S. and 26 Million Worldwide Suffer from CHF

Research shows that, in the US alone, around 5 million people live with it. The U.S. has 327 million people so that’s a significant number of people. Artificial Intelligence in this way will be steadily improving our healthcare system and reducing costs as more applications of AI are found each year.

The researchers claim that clinical practitioners and health systems “urgently require efficient detection processes” as a result of “high prevalence, significant mortality rates and sustained healthcare costs”.

I find some of the conclusions of the study quite significant. For example, they trained and tested the CNN model on large publicly available ECG datasets featuring subjects with CHF as well as healthy, non-arrhythmic hearts.

Their model delivered 100% accuracy: by checking just one heartbeat they were able to detect whether or not a person has heart failure. Additionally, their model is also one of the first known to be able to identify the ECG’ s morphological features specifically associated with the severity of the condition.

Medicine and Patient-Centric Care will be Augmented by AI in the Decades to Come

These general broad applications of AI in medicine means this tech could impact up to approximately 26 million people worldwide affected by a form of heart failure.

If you’re diagnosed with a disease, you probably want to know what the future holds. But with some conditions, it’s hard for your doctor to be certain. In matters of the heart, AI will soon be able to help distinguish easily which variety of heart disease by type and severity you suffer from fast-tracking treatment.

The University of Surrey led the study. They point out that advancements like these will enable clinical practitioners to access an accurate CHF detection tool can make a significant societal impact, with patients benefitting from early and more efficient diagnosis and easing pressures on NHS resources.

I think in 2019 we can safely say that the impact of artificial intelligence and deep learning on medicine and healthcare is just beginning. If AI neural network can detect heart failure from a single heartbeat, what else will it soon be able to do?

The future of healthcare in an era of machine learning and smart technology will mean the patient experience will be significantly improved. Telemedicine, new prediction, and preventative systems and improved care for seniors will mean technology has a significant opportunity to improve our health, well-being and resilience dealing with common ailments of aging and disease.

Heart disease is so prevalent and so common among aging populations that AI, in particular, could help reduce healthcare costs significantly in decades to come.

I write about AI and future trends.

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