Article 3 (Feb 2019): Tech Advances Spur Heart Diagnosis and Care

The future of cardiovascular care will be steered by artificial intelligence and wearable mobile devices, according to articles published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Every stage of patient care will be enhanced by artificial intelligence, according to Joel Dudley, director of the Next Generation Healthcare Institute at Mount Sinai.  AI will steer research, diagnosis and selection of therapy, he said.  The next step will bring technologies to a clinical setting.
 
In areas of patient health improvement and health-care delivery, digital health applies information to produce solutions. These technologies have the potential to streamline research while saving money; however, delays in their implementation are often the result of concerns regarding data quality, patient safety, and privacy.
 
Meanwhile, wearable mobile devices will continue to help manage heart problems.  It takes a personal commitment to a heart-healthy lifestyle of diet and exercise, medication, and self-monitoring to manage heart health.  It is here that ever-increasing use of mobile devices and wearables have made 24-hour health monitoring a reality for so many--especially those with atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder.
 
The authors targeted AFib, in particular, which is hard to detect and difficult to manage.  Office visits and short-term monitoring only provide limited information on the presence of the disease, but mobile health -- called mHealth -- will offer a more complete picture that can help prevent strokes, control symptoms, and reduce hospitalizations.
 
According to Dr. Michael McConnell, a Stanford clinical professor, the medical community has just begun to embrace the reality that health takes place outside the hospital and clinic.  New technologies, he said, will transform cardiovascular disease prevention and management.