A foot-volume-measuring device using 3D imagery and AI to automatically monitor heart failure patients, reducing hospital stays by 165,000 bed-days/year

2015年与一名心脏移植外科医生的一次对话引发了一个简单的问题：你知道吗，我做手术的人中，有一半人如果及时报告症状，就根本不需要手术。进一步的研究，让发自肺腑的创始人们挖掘出了隐藏的问题，那就是“不依附”的患者。这些人大多是老年人，通常是独居，许多人的智力正在恶化，他们无法听从医生给他们的建议。当他们的症状恶化时，他们没有呼救，而是以紧急入院告终。全球有超过6000万人患有心力衰竭-这是一种晚期疾病，其生存统计数据比大多数癌症都要差。治疗它们的成本是巨大的，仅在英国每年大约就有17亿GB，其中大部分花在提供昂贵的、往往可以预防的医院治疗上。哈特费尔特的愿景是通过一个位于患者家中的自主监测设备来解决这个问题，该设备可以测量足部体积的变化-心脏问题的关键指标-并触发警报，从而及时进行医疗干预。它有可能改善数百万心脏病患者的生活质量，还可以通过腾出病床来节省NHS的资金和减少急诊室的等待时间。哈特费尔特的监护仪是全自动的，不需要与患者互动。足量数据被上传到云中，并使用人工智能进行分析，人工智能会监测关键变化。这是一项复杂的尖端技术，受专利保护，但使用起来非常简单。在数百名英国患者身上进行的试点试验证明了这种监护仪的有效性。该项目的主要目标是敲定下一代设备的开发，为开始商业化之前的制造和监管批准做好准备。

The catalyst behind Heartfelt was a conversation with a heart transplant surgeon in 2015 that prompted a simple question: 'Do you know that half the people I operate on wouldn't require surgery at all if they had reported their symptoms in time?'. Further research enabled the Heartfelt founders to unearth the hidden problem of "non-adherent' patients. These are mostly elderly people, often living alone, many with deteriorating mental capacity, who are unable to follow the advice given to them by their doctors. Instead of calling for help as their symptoms get worse, they end up as emergency hospital admissions. There are over 60 million people globally with heart failure - a terminal illness with worse survival statistics than most cancers. The cost of treating them is substantial, roughly £1.7billion/year in the UK alone, most of which is spent delivering expensive and often preventable hospital treatments. Heartfelt's vision is to address this problem with an autonomous monitoring device that sits in the patient's home, measuring changes in foot volume -- key indicator of heart problems -- and triggering alerts and thus timely medical intervention. It has the potential to improve the life quality of millions of heart patients, and also to save the NHS money and reduce waiting time in A&E by freeing up hospital beds. Heartfelt's monitor is fully automatic and requires no interaction with the patient. The foot volume data is uploaded to the cloud and analysed using artificial intelligence, which watches for critical changes. It is complicated, cutting-edge technology, protected by patent but utterly simple to use. Pilot trials on hundreds of UK-based patients have demonstrated the effectiveness of the monitors. The main aim of the project is to finalise the development of the next-generation device, readying it for manufacturing and regulatory approvals ahead of starting commercialisation.