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

Heartfelt背后的催化剂是2015年与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，如果他们及时报告了他们的症状，我手术的一半人根本不需要手术？”'.进一步的研究使Heartfelt的创始人能够挖掘出隐藏的“非依从性”患者的问题。这些人大多数是老年人，往往独居，许多人的智力正在退化，无法听从医生的建议。当他们的症状恶化时，他们没有寻求帮助，而是被紧急送往医院。全球有超过6000万人患有心力衰竭-这是一种比大多数癌症生存率更差的绝症。治疗他们的费用是巨大的，仅在英国每年大约17亿英镑，其中大部分用于提供昂贵且通常可以预防的医院治疗。Heartfelt的愿景是通过一个自动监测设备来解决这个问题，该设备位于患者家中，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，并通过释放医院床位来节省NHS资金并减少A&E的等待时间。Heartfelt的监护仪是全自动的，不需要与患者互动。足部体积数据被上传到云端，并使用人工智能进行分析，人工智能会关注关键变化。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监测器的有效性。该项目的主要目标是完成下一代设备的开发，在开始商业化之前为制造和监管部门的批准做好准备。

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.