AI-Driven ECGs Signal Breakthrough in Heart Failure Care

In this interview, Mark Goddard, Vice President of Clinical Services at InfoBionic.Ai, emphasized the critical role of patient education and timely assessment in managing heart failure, particularly through early recognition of symptoms and the proactive use of diagnostic tools, such as echocardiograms and electrocardiograms. Goddard notes that social stigmas, especially among men and in lower-income communities, often hinder timely care and medication adherence, with concerns about side effects and sexual function impacting compliance. Moreover, Goddard highlights the high cost of heart failure hospitalizations and the importance of daily self-monitoring practices, such as tracking weight and pulse rate, to prevent exacerbations. He emphasized how AI is poised to revolutionize cardiac care by enabling clinicians to assess heart function through standard ECGs, providing a scalable and accessible solution that extends beyond the currently limited reach of implanted devices.

Transcript:

Cardio Care Today: What systemic challenges are preventing early detection and intervention for cardiac and heart failure patients?

Mark Goddard: I think it’s really it’s the patient being in the right situation to actually be assessed for heart failure metrics like having an echo done or going to a cardiologist for palpitations and having other studies done. A lot of folks, especially subjectively a lot of men hesitate to go maybe as soon as they should. So it’s really a matter of getting that education out to the folks however we can do that, and having them recognize what the symptoms and signs may be related to heart failure.

How does the underuse of advanced cardiac therapies and secondary prevention medications reflect deeper flaws in healthcare accessibility and how can clinician knowledge be enhanced to improve care quality? 

Yeah, again, it comes down to education, I think, more than anything else. And there are many factors associated with compliance or really even those patients that will actually even be willing to take cardiovascular medications. It seems to be more of an issue in lower-income communities or countries, and I think there’s a stigma related to it in that in certain situations, some of these cardiac meds, cardiovascular medications, will impact the way a man may feel.And for women too, sometimes they’ll make you a little slower, a little fatigued. They may also have sexual function impact, which quite often is a primary reason for guys to stop taking medications like that.

What are the hidden costs of delayed heart failure treatment on both patients and the healthcare system?

Well, the cost for heart failure management is dramatic. So the idea is to maintain pump function. So your heart is a pump and you want to make it work as efficiently as it possibly can. That’s the focus.

When folks aren’t assessed or patients aren’t assessed, in a time where they’re not in heart failure, but they are having signs of it and symptoms of it, there are medications out there that can help with improving cardiac function and reducing fluid overload and things like that. But the primary thing is to get those medications, make that contact and be compliant with these medications.

There’s also signs that should be well known for recognizing heart failure, especially once you’ve been diagnosed with it, because heart failure admissions to hospitals are quite expensive, and there are simple things that a patient can review daily at home that’ll keep them out of the hospital and save money for healthcare.

How does AI-powered cardiac analysis enhance the ability of clinicians to intervene earlier and how does this translate into cost savings?

Well, in the implanted device world, so pacemakers and defibrillators and implanted cardiac monitors, AI is used pretty consistently with most of those patients in that there are certain metrics that the device will track and trend, and those metrics are associated with exacerbations of heart failure. So that implanted device world has been dialed in on heart failure management for quite a while.

The thing about that is is there aren’t that many patients with these implanted devices. So as a result, we’ll rely on things like having the patient weigh themselves every day, checking their pulse. If it’s over 85 beats per minute for the day on average, that’s a little bit too fast. They probably have extra fluid. It might be related to heart failure. So there’s all those things for the patients to know.

But what AI is going to bring us very, very soon and is going to be part of the platform that the company I work with utilizes is the ability to assess cardiac output or pump function just by simply taking an ECG or an electrocardiogram. So you go to the doctor, you get a 12 lead done. And through that 12 lead, it’ll give the doctor an idea of whether, hey, I’m above the threshold where I’m normal, or I’m below that threshold and I should have further evaluation.

Simple tools like that, and that’s truly AI, are things we need to deploy everywhere that we’re doing these electrocardiograms. So we’re going to have it in our platform, but it should be at the hospital where they do 12 leads and anywhere where you might have a electrocardiogram taken.

What steps must healthcare systems take to scale advanced heart failure treatments and how can hospitals and clinicians integrate AI-driven remote monitoring without disrupting existing workflows?

That’s the tricky part, because for the implanted device world, that is a workload and it is something that needs to be managed. A lot of those patients are managed by third parties who have developed software that makes that work a little bit more efficient and makes sense for them to have as a business. So lots of folks rely on these third parties to manage that, and a lot of that is associated with heart failure. For the external monitors or the traditional ones that patients wear, a lot of it is just seen during the study, and we’re looking for those specific metrics that would let us to believe that, hey, something’s going on here.

Heart rates above a certain rate for the daytime, no real variation in heart rate from day and nighttime, things like that. So those are the things we need to focus on and get clinicians to understand how to use those tools to assure the patients understand what’s going on related to their health and how to manage it most effectively from the implanted device side, the external device side, and just these simple tools that you can use, and then again, using the AI tools that are coming very, very soon.