Heart disease is a major cause of death. If a doctor thinks their patient has heart disease they often send them for an echocardiogram (echo/ecg) scan which uses ultrasound to look at the heart and nearby blood vessels. A stress echo looks at the patient’s heart at rest and when the patient’s heart is working harder, for example after exercise.
Ultromics has developed the EchoGo Pro device. It uses artificial intelligence to analyse stress echo scans and produce a report for the doctor to review.
EchoGo Pro will be implemented at a number of NHS sites. This project aims to show that it helps doctors more reliably diagnose heart disease. It will evaluate how EchoGo Pro improves patient outcomes, saves the NHS money and can facilitate roll out to more hospitals across the country.
The PROTEUS trial (IRAS 293515) will compare the results of stress echo tests from patients whose doctors used the EchoGo Pro system with those from patients whose results were analysed in the normal way. Oxford AHSN will support with health economics and developing the value proposition for further NHS implementation.
This independent research is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (Artificial Intelligence, EchoGo Pro: NHS Impact of Automating Coronary Artery Disease Risk Prediction in Stress Echocardiogram Clinics, AI_AWARD 01833) and NHSX.