More than 11 million people worldwide have heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, or a weak heart pump. That's according to a 2020 study in the journal of the American Medical Association. A newly FDA-cleared artificial intelligence engineered by the Mayo Clinic and the company Eko Health can catch it in a matter of seconds.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by the Mayo Clinic in collaboration with Eko Health. This innovative AI system is designed to diagnose heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, a condition characterized by a weakened heart pump. The technology promises rapid diagnosis, capable of identifying the condition in just a few seconds.

Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction affects over 11 million people globally, according to a study published in 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The condition is a significant health concern as it impedes the heart's ability to pump blood efficiently throughout the body. The FDA's clearance of this AI stethoscope technology marks a critical advancement in the capabilities for early detection and intervention in patients suffering from this type of heart failure.



FDA clears AI stethoscope technology

This stethoscope has been around since 1816 and it's gotten an AI makeover. Doctors use it to listen to our heart and lungs and interpret what they hear. Often they need to do more tests like a CT or MRI scan to be sure about a diagnosis. They also use an electrocardiogram called ECG for short to measure the heart's activity. That's the electrical activity of my heart. We met with Connor Landgraf, a biomechanical engineer and CEO of Echo Health. For him, using AI to improve care is a personal and professional calling. I had pulmonary disease that was in my family. My grandfather passed away from COPD. I just felt like there had to be better technologies or better ways that physicians could use these tools to identify early signs of disease. A team at Mayo Clinic and Echo Health trained the AI program by having it listen to more than 100,000 patients' recordings. And in those, millions of heartbeats, strong hearts, weak hearts, young hearts, old hearts, and having the computer interpret that heart's activity. So in a doctor's office with the AI, it's recorded and analyzed a person's own heart strength in 10 to 15 seconds, showing some of the earliest, hardest to detect signs of heart failure with a low ejection infraction. This important disease that is often under-detected is associated with death, with comorbidities, with hospitalization, with shortness of breath symptoms, and they're powerful treatments, but we have to know it's there. Landgraf says the AI stethoscope with the newly OK'd AI cost $429 with a monthly subscription for the software. It has also been studied in pregnant women and with patients in London, showing high accuracy. Lizzie Theis-Scripps, News, Emeryville, California.

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Rise of AI