ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IN CARDIOLOGY
I wrote a post back on June 16, 2023, titled Can Your Doc Be Replaced by AI? In it, Anthony L. Kormaroff, MD, Editor in Chief of the Harvard Health Letter was asked if artificial intelligence will replace doctors? He answered, “Not in my lifetime, fortunately.”
Your doc will certainly stay in business. Nevertheless, he or she will become much more dependent on AI for disease detection. The biggest example is perhaps that A.I. tools are now holding promise in uncovering serious heart problems much sooner than in the past.
The cardiology team at the Mayo Clinic has emerged as a pioneer in integrating AI tools and technology into clinical practice. They are implementing innovative methods for early risk prediction and diagnosing serious or complex heart conditions. Below are excerpts from the March 16, 2024, article on MayoClinic.org titled Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Cardiovascular Medicine Overview:
Bringing artificial intelligence (AI) into clinical practice
People who receive heart care from Mayo Clinic’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine may benefit from access to the clinic’s leading-edge research and expertise in AI cardiology to improve patient care.
AI is intelligence exhibited by machines. It touches almost every facet of modern life, including medicine. AI is being used at Mayo Clinic to program computers. The goal is to process and respond to data quickly and consistently for better treatment outcomes.
Uses for AI include detecting heart disease, treating strokes faster and enhancing diagnostic radiology capabilities. For example, a Mayo Clinic study applied AI techniques to a new screening tool for people with a certain type of heart problem that has no obvious symptoms. The condition is called left ventricular dysfunction. The AI-assisted screening tool found people at risk of this condition 93% of the time. To put that in perspective, a mammogram is accurate 85% of the time. In addition, AI developed at Mayo Clinic is used in Apple Watch to detect a weak heart pump (low ventricular ejection fraction).
The basic building block of an AI system is a “neural network.” For example, a computer system is trained by ingesting and analyzing hundreds of thousands of sets of similar readings. It becomes experienced in looking at a focused problem, such as ECGs. The result is that an AI system can read a simple test, detect a heart condition and predict possible future problems.
These AI tools and techniques also play an important role in education. They are used by Mayo Clinic’s medical students, residents, fellows and experienced surgeons to learn new or uncommon procedures. Mayo Clinic leads by holding artificial intelligence symposiums that bring together doctors and scientists to advance this science in health care.
These technologies complement the knowledge of doctors. Ideally, by bringing together direct care and data analysis, AI cardiology allows doctors to spend more time with their patients and improves the shared decision-making process.
From research to clinical practice
Cardiovascular medicine doctors and scientists at Mayo Clinic are combining AI with clinical practice for better care. Here are three examples that have moved from the research stage to use in the clinic:
- Helping people who have had a stroke .In emergency rooms, when people come in with a stroke called an intracerebral hemorrhage, they get a CT scan. That scan is examined by a computer trained to analyze CT data. This method has been shown to cut the time to diagnosis and limit brain damage.
- Preventing heart problems. Applying AI to ECGs has resulted in a low-cost test that can be widely used to detect the presence of a weak heart pump. A weak heart pump can lead to heart failure if left untreated. Mayo Clinic is well situated to advance this use of AI because it has a database of more than 7 million ECGs. First, all identifying patient information is removed to protect privacy. Then this data can be mined to accurately and quickly predict heart failure.
- Detecting atrial fibrillation (AFib) sooner. AI-guided ECGs also are used to detect faulty heart rhythms before any symptoms are evident. A faulty heart rhythm also is called atrial fibrillation.
Research innovations in cardiovascular artificial intelligence
The Mayo Clinic cardiovascular medicine team was among the first specialties to rapidly develop and validate these new AI tools and technologies. Possible future uses still in development at Mayo Clinic include:
- Predicting risk early in conditions such as embolic stroke.
- Monitoring the heart and detecting arrhythmia in smart clothing projects.
- Developing AI technology compatible with smartphones and high-tech stethoscopes.
Mayo Clinic physicians, scientists, and engineers continually advance the study and practice of artificial intelligence that improves health care.