Artificial Intelligence based cardiology diagnostics leader, Cardiologs announced today the results of a new clinical study that showed how its platform significantly reduces inconclusive results returned by the Apple Watch ECG companion app.
The study included 101 patients in a typical tertiary care hospital who were assessed for atrial arrhythmia (AA). It was conducted using simultaneous ECGs: one 12-lead ECG along with single lead smartwatch ECGs taken from the wrist.
The smartwatch recordings were then processed to compare the two algorithms’ performances against 12-lead ECG readings by physicians, which is considered to be the gold standard method.
“Wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch, are capable of recording a single-lead ECG to determine cardiac rhythm. However, a large proportion of the smartwatch readings come back as inconclusive.
This problem was solved using Cardiologs’ AI algorithm. The data showed Cardiologs’ AI performed equally as well but, remarkably, the results were almost never inconclusive,” said Dr. Laurent Fiorina, Cardiac Electrophysiologist at the Institut Cardiovasculaire Paris-Sud (ICPS).
Overall, the Apple Watch ECG 2.0 App yielded inconclusive diagnoses for 19% (19/101) of all SmartWatch recordings. In comparison, Cardiologs’ deep neural network model reduced that number to 0% (0/101) while maintaining performance in accuracy, specificity and sensitivity.
Healthcare professionals are facing an epidemic of patients with cardiological diseases requiring ECG diagnostics, such as Atrial Fibrillation, due to growing prevalence of risk factors and ageing population.
AI-assisted analysis of electrocardiography is expected to be a significant help.
Cardiologs was acquired by Philips late last year. Cardiologs was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Paris, France. Its approximately 70 employees, largely comprising software engineers and data scientists with expertise in AI and deep learning algorithms are now part of Philips.
The acquisition of Cardiologs is a strong fit with Philips’ existing portfolio of cardiac care solutions. This includes real-time patient monitoring, therapeutic devices, telehealth and informatics for the hospital, as well as ambulatory cardiac diagnostics and monitoring solutions, that were added through the recent acquisition of BioTelemetry, Inc.
Reference:https://cardiologs.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AHA-Journal-AI-based-smartwatch-ECG-Analysis-improves-the-detection-of-atrial-arrhythmia.pdf
