February is American Heart Month and we’re taking a look at how new technology is shaping cardiovascular health care. Use of AI can be a controversial subject, but in many ways, it’s improving patient’s experiences and helping doctors detect problems they can’t see with the human eye.
“AI is a rapidly pervading medicine just like other aspects of our life,” said Dr. Eric Elgin, Chief of the Lehigh Valley Heart and Vascular Institute at LVH-Jefferson. He says AI is enhancing the way they treat from the moment a patient walks into the examination room.
Dr. Elgin said they use an AI system called Abridge which records the doctor-patient conversation. “It is an AI algorithm that is able to figure out what’s really supposed to be said in a chart and when you and I are just chatting,” he said. “It takes that information puts it into a clinical note.”
Saving time not having to go back and type the information in and allowing doctors more human interaction with their patients. “I can chat instead of me staring at the computer screen,” Dr. Elgin told 69 News.
All while not compromising the security of the patient’s private health information. “Those recordings are not kept,” said Dr. Elgin. He said the conversation is erased once the notes are documented.
AI is also doing things the human eye can’t. Dr. Elgin said, “We have a program that looks at hypertrophic cardiomyopathy”
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a genetic abnormality of the heart muscle that leads to abnormal growth. Dr. Elgin said it can affect about 1 in every 200 people and can be hard to detect.
“There are some subtleties within even the good old-fashioned EKG that an AI algorithm can find that as a cardiologist I cannot,” he said.
He said they’ve started using an AI platform with their EKG machine that flags images that look off. “Essentially says this one looks a little funny,” said Dr. Elgin. “You should take a closer look at it.”
Giving doctors a heads up. “It allows us to then identify a disease and identify a patient before they probably haven’t even had any problems, so we can say this is what is going on how do we make sure that this doesn’t affect you downstream,” said Dr. Elgin.
Which could save countless lives. “Our worst fear is we just discover hypertrophic cardiomyopathy after a sudden cardiac death experience,” said Dr. Elgin. “If we can find them before that happens, that’s a huge win.”
AI is also improving detection and treatment for conditions like pulmonary embolisms.
“This AI tool with a coronary angiogram, measures the flow dynamics across the artery and is able to give us that same information without putting additional equipment in the patient and then we make it a smart decision,” said Dr. Elgin. Resulting in more accurate diagnoses with less invasive procedures.
“Time to treatment, being able to identify a disease that if we can treat it earlier helps prevent bad outcomes,” said Dr. Elgin. “That’s where AI is really helping.”
Dr. Elgin said it’s only going to get more sophisticated and accurate in the future.
