New partnership aims to improve emergency cardiac care using artificial intelligence in Scotland
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, NHS Lothian and Lenus Health have partnered to operationalise AI-guided acute cardiac care
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, NHS Lothian and Lenus Health have come together to deliver a transformational digital health pathway supported by Wellcome Leap that will deploy artificial intelligence to support cardiac care in Emergency Departments.
The agreement draws on the world class data science work at the University of Edinburgh uniquely made possible by DataLoch, which securely stores and links real-time healthcare data from both primary and secondary care settings, the expertise in digital co-design from Edinburgh Napier University, and the Lenus disease management platform, deployed across NHS Scotland, to house and operationalise the models in live point of care clinical workflows within the Emergency Department.
Today, there are seven and a half million (1 in 4) annual Emergency Department visits in the UK where patients cite chest pain or severe breathlessness. Patients arriving with these symptoms must be quickly evaluated for acute cardiac disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. However, rapid and accurate diagnosis is often challenging with acute cardiac disease frequently indistinguishable from benign conditions.
For this reason, around twenty per cent of patients receiving acute cardiac care return to the Emergency Department within 30 days of their initial attendance, which places a significant burden on NHS resources and means that the patient has been delayed receiving effective treatment. By digitally delivering the most relevant clinical data and predictive analytics directly to Emergency care teams, the project aims to prevent at least one in five of those 30-day reattendances.
Harnessing data and artificial intelligence to support clinical decisions has enormous potential to improve care for patients and efficiency in our busy Emergency Departments
Nick Mills, British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Edinburgh
Nick Mills, British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, said: “For patients with acute chest pain or breathlessness due to a heart attack or heart failure, early diagnosis and treatment saves lives. Unfortunately, many conditions cause these common symptoms, and the diagnosis is not always straight forward. Harnessing data and artificial intelligence to support clinical decisions has enormous potential to improve care for patients and efficiency in our busy Emergency Departments.”
Alasdair Gray, Consultant and Honorary Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh said: “Chest pain is one of the most common problems presenting to Scottish Emergency Departments. This work, being developed in collaboration with patients and NHS staff, has the potential to improve substantially the care for chest pain patients not just in the Emergency Department but also in the months following hospital discharge”.
The Lenus disease management platform is rolled out across major health boards covering 68 per cent of the Scottish population and is uniquely able to develop and deploy both in-house and third-party AI models
Paul McGinness, Chief Executive Officer of Lenus Health
Paul McGinness, Chief Executive Officer of Lenus Health, said: “The Lenus disease management platform is rolled out across major health boards covering 68 per cent of the Scottish population and is uniquely able to develop and deploy both in-house and third-party AI models. Supporting frontline NHS staff and cardiac patients by delivering data and AI insights in the Emergency Department builds on the company’s ambition to reduce the acute care demands associated with long-term conditions that are currently overwhelming health systems through earlier and more efficient diagnoses of imprecise symptoms such as chest pain and breathlessness.”
Professor Lis Neubeck from Edinburgh Napier University said: “Involving staff and patients in healthcare transformation is a critical element in ensuring that a solution is feasible and acceptable, and ensures that we co-create a solution that actually works in clinical practice.”
Notes to editors:
For more information, please contact Dillan Yogendra (dillan@silver-buck.com) on behalf of Lenus Health
About Lenus Health
Lenus Health helps unlock the existing health data silos to facilitate more efficient and effective care pathways, with a focus on the most challenging long-term conditions. Our interoperable platform underpins digital services to enable more streamlined clinical workflows and allows providers to do more with their existing IT infrastructure, enhanced by wearable and device integrations. The platform is proven to act as a test bed for innovation used to operationalise AI tools and generate unique structured datasets. Transforming the end-to-end pathway for chronic disease creates a more sustainable system with patients at the centre of their care journey. Visit www.lenushealth.com and follow @lenushealth on Twitter to learn more.
About DataLoch
DataLoch is a data service that has been developed in partnership by the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian. Funded through the Data-Driven Innovation initiative – a major part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal – the DataLoch team brings together key health and social care data to enable data-driven approaches to the prevention and treatment of different conditions, as well as the provision of health and social care services more broadly. Surrounding this work is a strict code of governance: anyone seeking access to extracts of data have to be approved through NHS Lothian and DataLoch processes, including DataLoch’s Public Reference Group which assesses the public value of each research application. For further details about the DataLoch service – including summaries of the projects that have been supported to date – visit www.dataloch.org.
About Edinburgh Napier University
We are Edinburgh Napier University, the #1 modern university in Scotland (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023), the #1 university in Edinburgh for student satisfaction (NSS 2020, 2021 & 2022), a top 10 UK modern university (Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023), and the top Scottish modern university for research power and impact (Research Excellence Framework 2021). We pride ourselves on being the home of difference makers—an enterprising and innovative community, renowned internationally, with an unrivalled student learning experience. With more than 300 undergraduate and postgraduate courses and nearly 20,000 students from over 140 countries studying on campus in Edinburgh, online and at partner universities worldwide, we deliver meaningful, difference-making education and research for a rapidly changing world. For more information, visit www.napier.ac.uk.
About NHS Lothian
NHS Lothian is Scotland’s second largest Health Authority providing a comprehensive range of primary, community and acute hospital services to people in Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian. It is a highly research-active healthcare provider, collaborating with Universities and also has a substantial research support infrastructure in place including its five teaching hospitals, Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility and Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit.