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Trials of a new AI-powered stethoscope have found that doctors have been able to find three heart conditions in patients in just 15 seconds.
The study, part-funded by the British Heart Foundation and presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual congress in Madrid, involved 200 GP surgeries with over 1.5 million patients who had symptoms of fatigue and/or breathlessness.
The AI stethoscope trial saw 12,725 patients examined by 96 surgeries using the AI-enabled stethoscope, and were compared to patients at 109 surgeries.
The stethoscope was found to drastically improve diagnosis rates of major heart issues, including a 3.5 times increase in atrial fibrillation diagnosis and doubling the rate of heart valve disease and heart failure diagnosis.
All three diseases require early detection for the best treatment, making the use of an AI-enabled stethoscope a powerful tool for GPs. Over a million people in the UK are affected by heart failure, and over 70 per cent of cases go unnoticed until the patient is rushed to hospital.
“This is an elegant example of how the humble stethoscope, invented more than 200 years ago, can be upgraded for the 21st century,” said British Heart Foundation clinical director and consultant cardiologist, Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan.
“We need innovations like these, providing early detection of heart failure, because so often this condition is only diagnosed at an advanced stage when patients attend hospital as an emergency. Given an earlier diagnosis, people can access the treatment they need to help them live well for longer.”
The device works by taking an ECG recording of the electrical signals emitted by the patient’s heartbeat, while a microphone records the blood flow sounds.
This data is then sent to a secure cloud to be analysed by an AI that has been trained on the health data of “tens of thousands” of patients, meaning it is able to pick up even small signs of a heart issue that would be missed by a conventional stethoscope.
If a patient is flagged as having a risk, the results are sent to a smartphone immediately.
However, as incredible as the technology has proven to be, the British Heart Foundation found that 70 per cent of the GP surgeries that were given the AI stethoscopes abandoned their use after 12 months, with researchers suggesting that the implementation of the technology could be difficult, and that a wider rollout would be needed.
The study also found that the AI was overly cautious when detecting cases of heart failure, with two in three flagged by the AI being found not to have heart failure after further tests and scans.
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