Artificial intelligence promises to transform diagnosis of heart disease

Doctors and nurses at the Golborne Medical Centre, in one of the UK’s most deprived areas, crowd together in a small examination room, eager to try out a new stethoscope.

The instrument looks similar to the ones in use at the clinic, which have not been redesigned for about 200 years. This one however has a significant difference: it uses artificial intelligence to detect heart disease instantly.

The Golborne practice, which lies over the railway track from London’s affluent Notting Hill neighbourhood, is one of 200 GP surgeries in north-west London and Wales to receive an AI stethoscope in the UK’s first deployment of the technology in primary care. Nearly half of Golborne’s patients come from non-white minority ethnic groups, who tend to face a higher risk of death from heart disease.

The tool has been licensed by medical regulators for use by general physicians and will be the first AI product that can be relied on to prescribe life-saving medication without the need for a specialist review first.  

AI diagnostics promise to be a game-changer for the UK’s National Health Service and its staff, who are working under enormous strain. As the health service heads into what is expected to be one of its toughest winters, figures in October showed that people were waiting for a near record 7.7mn non-emergency appointments.

If properly designed and tested, AI software can give instant results, is cheap to deploy at scale, and can help prioritise and triage patients on waiting lists. The speed of the technology could help avoid thousands of excess deaths while offering big savings to overburdened health services.

“There are around 300,000 patients on diagnostic waiting lists for heart conditions,” said Mihir Kelshiker, an NHS cardiologist and a clinical fellow in digital health at Imperial College London who is overseeing the deployment of the new tool.