Making digital health work for excluded populations: a companion app for an AI medical device specifically designed for the most vulnerable heart failure patients

这个真心设备背后的催化剂是2015年与一名心脏移植外科医生的一次对话，这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自己的症状，就根本不需要手术。进一步的研究使这些真心的创始人发现了‘不遵守’患者的隐藏问题。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，而是紧急入院。全球有6000多万人患有心力衰竭--这是一种晚期疾病，其生存统计比大多数癌症都要差。治疗它们的成本是巨大的，仅在英国就大约每年17亿GB，其中大部分花在提供昂贵且往往可以预防的医院治疗上。哈特费尔特的愿景是通过放置在患者家中的自主监测设备来解决这个问题，以识别早期的心脏问题。心型设备是全自动的，不需要与患者互动。数据被上传到云中，并使用人工智能进行分析，人工智能监控关键变化。它是复杂、尖端的技术，但使用起来非常简单。与该奖项相关的项目不仅将帮助我发展我的领导技能，并支持我们的筹款形象，还将使我能够开发这款应用程序，以增加我们的医疗设备已经可以为患者带来的价值。它促进以患者为中心的护理，并在设计时与心脏科医生、全科医生、护士、患者及其家人进行密切磋商。它有可能改善数百万心脏病患者的生活质量，还可以通过腾出医院病床来节省NHS的资金和减少急诊室的等待时间。我对这个项目带来的志愿服务机会也非常感兴趣。这些可能会增加我在指导和鼓励年轻妇女和女孩打破障碍方面的参与。医疗保健需要更多创新的解决方案，让更多的女性考虑将生物技术作为职业选择将有助于加快创新。

The catalyst behind the Heartfelt device 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 autonomous monitoring devices that sit in the patient's home to identify early heart problems. The Heartfelt device is fully automatic and requires no interaction with the patient. The data is uploaded to the cloud and analysed using artificial intelligence, which monitors for critical changes. It is complicated, cutting-edge technology, but utterly simple to use.The programme associated with this award would not only help me develop my leadership skills, and support our profile for fundraising, it will also allow me to develop this app to increase the value that our medical device can already bring to patients. It promotes patient-centric care and is being designed in close consultation with cardiologists, GP, Nurses, patients and their families. 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.I am also very interested in the volunteering opportunities that come with the project. These will likely increase my involvement in mentoring and encouraging young women and girls to break barriers. Healthcare needs more innovative solutions, and getting more women to consider biotech as a career option will help speed up innovation.