India News | AI-based Tool to Predict Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases Launched for Healthcare Providers
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. An artificial intelligence-based tool to predict risk of cardiovascular diseases for an early intervention was launched on Tuesday for healthcare providers across the country by a leading private healthcare group.
New Delhi, Sep 28 (PTI) An artificial intelligence-based tool to predict risk of cardiovascular diseases for an early intervention was launched on Tuesday for healthcare providers across the country by a leading private healthcare group.
From today, the Apollo Hospitals Group has made this tool available for all physicians across the country, a spokesperson of the healthcare group said.
Using the tool, physicians will be enabled to deliver "proactive, pre-emptive and preventive care" for at-risk individuals, improving lives while mitigating future pressure on healthcare systems, the group said in a statement.
Apollo Hospitals on Tuesday announced the national launch of its AI-based tool to predict risk of cardiovascular diseases, in an online event, the spokesperson said.
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The Apollo AI-powered Cardiovascular Disease Risk tool will help healthcare providers to predict the risk of cardiac diseases in patients and initiate intervention early enough to make a real difference, it said.
The cardiac risk scoring tool is "remarkable for the speed in processing data and its accuracy in predicting the probability of a patient developing a coronary disease," the statement said.
"While some predictive tools do exist to help physicians understand the probability of their patients developing a heart disease, most of these are based on western data sets and don't take regional risk variations into account. This impacts their accuracy when applied in an Indian context," Dr Prathap C Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group, was quoted as saying in the statement.
"The Apollo AI-powered tool will change that and put the knowledge and the means to predict and prevent heart disease in the physician's hands. Available till now only to Apollo's physicians, it is a proud moment for us to dedicate this AI tool to all physicians in the country," he said.
Reddy said the nation's economy is intricately linked to the health of the people with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) leading to loss of productivity with a consequent impact on national income.
Among the rising burden of NCDs, cardiovascular diseases figure at the top. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the Asia Pacific, and it's a problem that will only intensify as populations continue to age. It's also a problem that healthcare providers struggle to diagnose early enough to make a real difference, the statement said.
Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group said, “The tool is built on algorithms based on 10 years of anonymised data relating to around 4,00,000 individuals across the country collected by the team at Apollo Hospitals.”
"The tool has also been validated internationally using federated learning through Microsoft Azure Platform. Doctors across the Apollo network have been leveraging this AI-powered tool for three years to predict risk of cardiovascular disease and drive preventive cardiac care across the country. With this launch of the AI tool to predict risk of heart disease, we will be able to help achieve the World Health Organization's goal of reducing the risk of premature mortality from non-communicable diseases, including CVDs, by 25 per cent by 2025," she said.
The AI-powered tool delivers a more accurate CVD risk score using algorithms specifically for the Indian population and helps in developing standardised care regimens, the group claimed.
Developed using a combination of applied AI and clinical expertise on a large sample of retrospective data on health checks and coronary events, the tool delivers a risk score that takes into account all contributing factors, including lifestyle attributes such as diet, tobacco and smoking preferences and physical activity as well as psychological stress and anxiety as reflected via rate of respiration, and hypertension, it said.
The risk is categorised into 'High', 'Moderate' and 'Minimal'. The tool also gives insights on the risk contributors that can be modified to improve the score. This enables physicians to give a more holistic advice to their patients with specific insights for lifestyle modification, it added.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)