Novel Technology Improves GP referral decisions to cardiology

 

Cardio-HART is the clinician’s AI-powered heart diagnostic assistant. Early detection of heart disease can prolong or increase a patient's quality of life. In addition, it will reduce the burden on the health system and create better communication between GPs and cardiologists.

Open Heart magazine published a study “Novel tech throws knock-out punch to ECG improving GP referral decisions to cardiology” by Simone Calcagno, Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai, Tatjana Stankovic, Erzsebet Szabo, Aniko Berta Szabo, and Istvan Kecskes.

 

Why is this study important?

The study indicates that Cardio-HART (CHART) assists the medical professional to determine if the symptoms may be related to cardiac abnormalities or establish some new risks that can lead to cardiac disease if not treated properly. This is especially valuable for patients with recurrent symptoms, which can be difficult to catch with the traditional ECG, or during the regular medical examination.

 

Abstract

Purpose In a comparator study, designed with assistance from the Food and Drug Administration, a State-of-the-Art (SOTA) ECG device augmented with automated analysis, the comparator, was compared with breakthrough technology, Cardio-HART (CHART).

Methods The referral decision defined by physician reading biosignal-based ECG or CHART report were compared for 550 patients, where its performance is calculated against the ground truth referral decision. The ground truth was established by cardiologist consensus based on all the available measurements and findings including echocardiography (ECHO).

Results The results confirmed that CHART analysis was far more effective than ECG-only analysis: CHART reduced false-negative rates by 15.8% and false positive (FP) rates by 5%, when compared with SOTA ECG devices. General physicians (GPs) using CHART saw their positive diagnosis rate significantly increase, from ~10% to ~26% (260% increase), and the uncertainty rate significantly decreased, from ~31% to ~1.9% (94% decrease). For cardiology, the study showed that in 98% of the cases, the CHART report was found to be a good indicator as to what kind of heart problems can be expected (the ‘start-point’) in the ECHO examination.

Conclusions The study revealed that GP use of CHART resulted in more accurate referrals for cardiology, resulting in fewer true negative or FP—healthy or mildly abnormal patients not in need of ECHO confirmation. The indirect benefit is the reduction in wait times and in unnecessary and costly testing in secondary care. Moreover, when used as a start-point, CHART can shorten the echocardiograph examination time.

Read the full study in Open Herat magazine.