Within the next five years, the annual cost of heart failure (HF) is anticipated to edge towards a staggering $70 billion. It is one of the biggest cost centers in healthcare and linked to many other serious health conditions. While we’ve heard a lot about preventive care over the past number of years, we have not seen any progress. In fact, the situation is getting worse. According to the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA), approximately one in four Americans will develop HF in their lifetime.
One of the reasons this problem has been hard to solve is the fact that there are so many interdependent root causes of heart failure, with a wide and siloed range of tools used for diagnosis. Despite many attempts at scalable solutions that would identify issues earlier, we have been unable to get a full picture of the heart in a way that helps identify risk, pinpoint cause, and confirm an accurate path to treatment.
Until now.
The combination of AI and advanced signal processing, along with innovations in digital and wearable tech, places us in a moment where providers will soon be able to have high-quality data that presents the opportunity to shift from reactive heart failure treatment to preventive cardiac care.
What’s at stake
Today, nearly 7 million Americans suffer from heart failure, and that number is expected to continue rising rapidly over the next decade. Unfortunately, it is also paired with an increasing mortality rate since 2012.
At the same time, we are facing a shortage of cardiologists, and overworking those we have, making the situation even more dire. A 2022 survey found that patients were having to wait 26% longer on average for a general cardiovascular checkup than they did five years prior. In 2019, more than a third of the members of the American College of Cardiology reported being burned out, with an additional 44% feeling stressed.
We can keep trying the same things we have been doing for decades. We can keep overtaxing our system and the providers trying to survive in it. Or, we can rethink the ways we are implementing new technology, and find a different solution. For example, what if we leverage digital tools and other innovative technology into existing routines in a new way? We could gather the information providers need sooner in order to reduce the number of acute cases that escalate into hospitalizations, emergency interventions, and irreversible decline.
Laying the groundwork
Let’s imagine a typical waiting area for a primary care physician. In walks a young adult, here for their annual physical. As they check in with the receptionist, they are given a clipboard to collect their medical history, HIPAA and billing paperwork to fill out, and a wearable device that will capture dozens of cardiac data points with high-fidelity signals. The receptionist gives quick guidance on how to use the device, and the patient keeps it on throughout the intake process. This data is fed through an AI-enabled platform that records the data and summarizes insights. When the doctor enters the room 10-20 minutes later, they are armed with an actionable snapshot of the patient’s heart.
As the years go on, each time the patient sees their physician, more data points are entered into the EHR, giving the technology more insight into changes, risks, and concerning developments. This information gives the primary care physician the opportunity to intervene at a much earlier stage through non-invasive treatments such as ACE inhibitors, beta blockers, and lifestyle changes. If escalation is needed and the patient is referred to a specialist, it is based on validated signals and long-term context.
Ripple effects
Heart failure is a major player in the American healthcare crisis. Shifting our focus to preventive risk identification just might hold the key to reducing the brutal personal and economic effects of a condition that impacts almost every single person in this country, whether directly or indirectly.
The right preventive cardiac care would drastically reduce emergency room visits, easing the burden on emergency departments already bursting at the seams. It would reduce the volume of patient demand for specialists, helping to reduce burnout for providers and improve outcomes for those patients who do have an urgent need for care.
The effects would go beyond just the cardiac care industry, though. Fewer acute events means more people are healthy for longer, gaining years of memories with loved ones, able to keep their jobs instead of relying on disability benefits, and delay entry into assisted living facilities. When fewer people experience the crisis of heart failure, every system downstream benefits. Perhaps in the next five years, instead of lamenting rising costs and mortality rates, we will be using the tools at our disposal to make things decidedly better.
Photo: BrianAJackson, Getty Images
Growing up in a family from rural Kentucky, Chris Darland saw firsthand how geography and access shape health outcomes — especially in cardiac care. While consumer wearables have expanded patient engagement, he recognized a critical gap: the clinically-actionable data providers rely on was still largely confined to hospitals.
So he set out to bring hospital-grade cardiac diagnostics beyond hospital walls and earlier in a patient’s journey. As President and CEO of Peerbridge Health, Chris leads the effort to make high-fidelity cardiac monitoring accessible to everyone, everywhere. By combining an ultra-low-cost ECG wearable with advanced signal processing, Peerbridge delivers trusted, hospital-grade data outside traditional care settings, without sacrificing accuracy.
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