The eHealth sector is experiencing a moment of transition, favored by the emergence of new innovative tools for the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients with the aim of offering a personalized service to each one of them. according to the characteristics of their pathologies. In this sense, AstraZeneca, together with the Spanish startup idovena specialist in the development of Artificial Intelligence to detect cardiovascular diseases, are applying their knowledge to become strategic drivers in the healthcare field.
The Cardiovascular diseases are the most prevalent pathologies and the first cause of death in the world. One of the most serious and costly is heart failure, which is characterized by a decrease in the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively. HF affects more than 770,000 people in Spain and is the leading cause of hospitalization in people over 65 years of age, according to the PATHWAYS-HF study, published in the Spanish Journal of Cardiology.
Despite being an important cause of medical consultations, hospital admissions, a high mortality rate, and representing a huge cost to health systems, it is also often misdiagnosed. Also, early diagnosis is difficult due to the lack of specific symptoms in the initial stages of the disease. Thus, the alliance between AstraZeneca and Idoven aims to address this problem.
Thanks to this alliance, it will be possible to effectively diagnose patients over 65 years of age who suffer from heart failure, improving the interpretation of electrocardiograms and establishing a standardized process for their readings. in Primary Care. Therefore, the treatment will be adapted to the patients thanks to its remote monitoring, thus helping to reduce the overload in health centers.
An innovative project as a solution to an underdiagnosed disease
For the correct development of the project, the implementation will be carried out in two phases:
- The identification of patients and the monitoring of their cardiac pathologies. For this, several health centers will participate. “It will be performed using an electrocardiogram that is analyzed by our platform based on Artificial Intelligence to identify patients at risk of HF in minutes, the results being reviewed and confirmed by our team of cardiologists. After this, they are shared with the primary care physician for further follow-up.”explains Manuel Marina, cardiologist and CEO of Idoven.
- Remotely monitor patients who have already been diagnosed with heart failure, This monitoring is carried out with the help of a Fitbit device. Monitoring will be carried out with a frequency of between three and seven times a week or at the request of the patient, depending on their clinical history. This will be possible thanks to the fact that the selected Fitbit devices allow recording electrocardiograms from the wrist so that later, in collaboration with Idoven, the information can be transferred to health professionals.
This program, pioneer in our country and in Europe, It will be developed with the intention of laying the foundations for the application of Artificial Intelligence for the detection of cardiovascular diseases. In this sense, Dr. César Velasco, Director of Innovation and Digital Strategy of AstraZeneca Spain highlights that “We are convinced that technological advances, such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, are opening up new avenues of innovation in health, allowing a shift towards more personalized care, early diagnosis and a tool for improving the quality of care. For this reason, at AstraZeneca we encourage collaboration with academic institutions, governments, health centers and companies to access better scientific advances and thus stimulate innovation: focusing more on the patient and advancing cutting-edge science”.
