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

衷心设备背后的催化剂是2015年与一位心脏移植外科医生的谈话，他提出了一个简单的问题：“你知道吗，如果我做过手术的人中有一半人及时报告了症状，他们根本不需要手术？”进一步的研究使衷心的创始人发现了“非依从”患者的隐藏问题。这些人大多是独居的老年人，许多人的心智能力正在恶化，无法听从医生给他们的建议。当他们的症状变得更糟时，他们不是寻求帮助，而是最终被紧急送往医院。全球有超过6000万人患有心力衰竭，这是一种晚期疾病，其存活率比大多数癌症都要低。治疗这些疾病的费用相当可观，仅在英国每年就大约有17亿英镑，其中大部分都花在了昂贵且通常可以预防的医院治疗上。衷心的愿景是通过自动监测设备来解决这个问题，这些设备可以放在患者家中，以识别早期心脏问题。衷心装置是全自动的，不需要与病人互动。这些数据被上传到云端，并使用人工智能进行分析，人工智能会监控关键变化。这是一项复杂的尖端技术，但使用起来非常简单。与这个奖项相关的项目不仅可以帮助我提高我的领导能力，支持我们的筹款形象，还可以让我开发这个应用程序，以增加我们的医疗设备已经能给病人带来的价值。它促进以患者为中心的护理，并正在与心脏病专家、全科医生、护士、患者及其家属密切协商设计。它有可能改善数百万心脏病患者的生活质量，也可以节省NHS的资金，并通过腾出医院病床减少在急诊室的等待时间。我也对项目带来的志愿服务机会非常感兴趣。这些可能会增加我在指导和鼓励年轻女性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速创新。

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.