Five Tangible Ways That Technology Is Transforming Cardiac Care
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for both men and women, but emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are creating substantial opportunities for a healthier future.
“Similar to the way genomics has advanced cancer care, the emergence of AI is allowing cardiologists to reimagine everything we know about how the heart works and how we care for it,” says Partho Sengupta, MD, Chief of Cardiology, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH); Henry Rutgers Professor of Cardiology and Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; and a member of RWJBarnabas Health (RWJBH) Medical Group.
Dr. Sengupta has a front-row seat for this technological revolution. He’s coleader of the Center for Innovation at RWJUH, a pioneering initiative focused on research-based development, testing and implementation of digital solutions that can improve care throughout the RWJBH system.
“While AI is a major focus, I prefer to define AI as ‘augmented intelligence,’” Dr. Sengupta says. “That’s because we will never use AI to replace doctors, nurses and caregivers. Instead, we’ll use it to augment their work.”
Dr. Sengupta and his team are using or evaluating technologies that promise to deliver key benefits to heart patients, including:
- Finding threats sooner
- Analyzing images
- Boosting safety
- Simplifying care
- Improving office visits
1. Finding Threats Sooner
AI allows doctors to more quickly identify structural heart defects, find symptoms of heart failure and detect evidence of heart attacks.
Medical teams accomplish this in part through different types of imaging, using AI-driven algorithms and deep learning capabilities to view X-rays, ultrasounds, CT (computed tomography) scans and MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging scans) of the heart.
“With imaging techniques, doctors can perform a greater variety of standardized measurements within heart images, which helps predict heart disease sooner,” Dr. Sengupta says. “This gives us a huge opportunity to care for heart conditions before they become more serious.”
In some cases, improved imaging helps doctors prevent emergencies. By using AI in a type of scan called fractional flow reserve CT, for example, doctors create a highly accurate, 3D model of a patient’s coronary arteries that can both detect blockages and assess their significance. Information from this technology has already led some patients back from the brink of a heart attack.
On the horizon: Doctors may use AI to augment the interpretation of subtle changes in EKGs (electrocardiograms) as a screening tool, potentially for early detection of heart disease, even predicting when heartbeats could become irregular (arrhythmias).
2. Analyzing Images
Researchers are exploring ways that large amounts of data from advanced imaging combined with machine learning can analyze pixels of cardiac images that might otherwise be invisible to doctors. This capability to analyze pixellevel information, called radiomics, trains AI algorithms to detect subtle patterns that indicate the presence of certain heart conditions.
“For example, cardiac ultrasounds, CT scans and MRIs give us images in 256 shades of gray, but the human eye can’t see all those shades,” Dr. Sengupta says. “Radiomics could enhance information related to gray-level distributions, potentially enabling us to indicate the presence of scar tissue or damaged heart muscle more precisely.”
3. Boosting Safety
AI can serve as a double check for physicians and other heart care professionals, enhancing accuracy when diagnosing and treating complex conditions.
One example is detecting aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the aortic valve. “It’s a complicated presentation that can be missed on EKGs,” Dr. Sengupta says. “AI could develop alerts that automatically detect stenosis and flag it.”
Similarly, natural language processing, a type of AI that allows computers to understand human commands, could be used to help review medical records and notify doctors about underlying health conditions that factor into a patient’s care. As a result, providers could develop more personalized and safer treatment plans.
Also under review are solutions that integrate AI into remote patient monitoring. These tools provide continuous observation, transmit key vital signs to providers and flag anomalies, helping patients go home from the hospital sooner and achieve a faster, safer recovery.
4. Simplifying Care
Technology is bringing efficiencies directly to patients. For example, some RWJBH outpatient cardiology practices use pocket ultrasound, a technology that allows doctors to see heart images on an iPhone during a patient visit, enabling physicians to offer immediate guidance on cardiac health.
Researchers are also investigating whether technology can help ultrasounds better identify dead heart tissue that indicates a heart attack. “If successful, this could allow more people to get ultrasounds in the office and receive appropriate referral for MRI, while reducing unnecessary tests in many,” Dr. Sengupta says.
Similarly, RWJBH researchers are looking into the use of handheld infrared devices that can see through the surface of the skin and identify molecules that indicate the presence of a blocked artery. “By detecting conditions like this quickly, we can get patients to the ER faster,” Dr. Sengupta says.
5. Improving Office Visits
The doctor-patient relationship is at the center of successful heart care, and AI is helping providers spend more face time with patients. Advances such as automated dictation can free physicians from manual documentation tasks, allowing them to look less at a computer screen during office visits and spend more time delivering detailed health guidance and coaching.
“By using technology to make providers more efficient, doctors can create more meaningful conversations with patients, building empathy and trust,” Dr. Sengupta says. “As a result, patients get a better experience and doctors can perform more critical thinking and problem-solving—the tasks that make them feel more fulfilled.”
Learn more about Heart and Vascular Care at RWJBarnbas Health.
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