How Does COVID-19 Affect The Heart - and How Could AI Help?

Hello valued readers, please follow the most scientific and evidence-based suggestions that our government recommends (gov.uk/coronavirus), where appropriate, I urge you to follow lockdown and maintain social distancing for the good of yourself and families. One instance of contact is all that is necessary for you to contribute to the spread of this virus, even to those whom you love, to those who have worked day and night to become clinical staff, it would be nothing but a great shame to endanger far more lives for your own mistakes - it’s difficult but we will all get through it as a united globe. Stay safe, and best wishes from myself and all at AIDaily.

It has been found that there is a united research offense against COVID-19, with teams on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Ultromics, a small company who aims to develop automated tools in order to support physicians in the laborious process of medical diagnosis, represents the United Kingdom and the legendary Mayo Clinic, a globally respected academic medical center, represents the Americas. They will utilize EchoGo Core, a platform of the British counterpart, which will be used to assess echocardiograms taken from sufferers of the onset of symptoms associated the Covid-19 virus. The platform was approved by the FDA, under 510(k) clearance, to be used in cardiovascular image analysis late in 2019 and to generally aid with the decision-making processes within a clinical (in this scenario, cardiological) environment – a role of AI in healthcare that we are far too familiar with! According to Guided Solutions, Ultromics has partnerships with major cardiology clinical centres in the US and 30 NHS centres in the UK. Through the partnerships, the company is continuously improving its scanning algorithms by analysing the archive of scans held by these centres – as we see in deep learning, the performance of a system will steadily improve in alignment with the increase in size of the dataset available to the neural network. As such, this solution will improve with time, so initial testing will give us only a window into the magnitudes of success that could be enabled with further training.

 
This is the logo for the newly documented platform, EchoGo. According to them, it is an ‘AI-driven system which automates the analysis of echocardiograms, to assist in the assessment of cardiovascular function and help with decision-making around patient care.’ Credit: Ultromics.

This is the logo for the newly documented platform, EchoGo. According to them, it is an ‘AI-driven system which automates the analysis of echocardiograms, to assist in the assessment of cardiovascular function and help with decision-making around patient care.’ Credit: Ultromics.

 

Ross Upton, the proud CEO of Ultromics, had the following to say; “To date, there is no way of linking the impact of the virus to predicted patient outcomes. By applying our technology to the evaluation of COVID associated echocardiograms, we can help understand the characteristics of cardiac involvement. We hope that by discovering a way to do this, patient management can be optimized – this is incredibly important where resources are scarce. Most importantly, we can give physicians the gift of time to treat those most in danger.” With Mayo Clinic’s vast and extensive expertise in cardiology, it is certain that the experience of the leads at Mayo Clinic will be a perfect complementary for the youthful but innovative technologies being developed at Ultromics. The joint study will be conducted by the Gary Woodward, CTO of Ultromics, and Patricia A. Pellikka, a clinical researcher at Mayo Clinic. It is believed that the coronavirus has a considerable potential for cardiovascular implications, such as myocarditis, microvascular disease and side effects from treatments (known as therapy-associated cardiotoxicity), according to News Medical. The study will look at 500 men and women who have tested positive for coronavirus, in a diverse range from ages 18 to 89. These individuals will have undergone a ‘clinically indicated echocardiography exam’ during a three-month period. The focus is to establish some assessment into  aspects such as ejection fraction (volumetric fraction of fluid ejected from a chamber with each contraction) and global longitudinal strain (method for assessing systolic function) to help classify and predict outcomes for patients with COVID-19.

EchoGo Core, with its promise with helping making decisions for patients suffering from complications of COVID-19, could help doctors to focus more on treating the patients psychologically – it is well known that mental healthcare is subpar in the NHS, and when services are pushed to their limits in times such as these, helping doctors manage their massive workloads will only help to provide the human touch that is so vital for people suffering in solitude from the grasp of their families and friends. My best wishes to you all.

 
Ross Upton, who completed his PhD in Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford University, is the current of CEO of Ultromics. Credits: The Oxford Trust

Ross Upton, who completed his PhD in Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford University, is the current of CEO of Ultromics. Credits: The Oxford Trust

 

An incredible ode of thanks to all those at the Mayo Clinic and Ultromics who proposed these plans to investgate the efficacy of applying artificial intelligence in the promise of assisting those who are struggling with heart disease and are vulnerable to the coronavirus. There is no greater act of honour than attempting to help those who are at the most risk, and generally contributing to the global united offense against the dreaded virus - we salute you!

Thank you all for your time in reading, stay safe, and I hope you all stay happy and occupied in self-isolation!

Article thumbnail credit: Cardiac Injury Common in COVID-19, Predicts Mortality, Medscape [click here for page]. Note that this article has not contributed to any of the written content of my article, and that you click the above link at your own discretion as the page has not been checked by our team. Thank you to our readers for your continued support, and to anyone who contributes to our fantastic team to keep our services in an orderly fashion.