New Data Shows Artificial Intelligence Technology Can Help Doctors Better Determine Which Patients are Having a Heart Attack

ABBOTT PARK, Ill., Sept. 12, 2019 -- Abbott announced that new research, published in the journal Circulation, found its algorithm could help doctors in hospital emergency rooms more accurately determine if someone is having a heart attack or not, so that they can receive faster treatments or be safely discharged.1 In this study, researchers from the U.S., Germany, U.K., Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand looked at more than 11,000 patients to determine if Abbott's technology developed using artificial intelligence (AI) could provide a faster, more accurate determination that someone is having a heart attack or not. The study found that the algorithm provided doctors a more comprehensive analysis of the probability that a patient was having a heart attack or not, particularly for those who entered the hospital within the first three hours of when their symptoms started. "With machine learning technology, you can go from a one-size-fits-all approach for diagnosing heart attacks to an individualized and more precise risk assessment that looks at how all the variables interact at that moment in time," said Fred Apple, Ph.D., Hennepin HealthCare/ Hennepin County Medical Center, professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Minnesota, and one of the study authors. "This could give doctors in the ER more personalized, timely and accurate information to determine if their patient is having a heart attack or not." A team of physicians and statisticians at Abbott developed the algorithm* using AI tools to analyze extensive data sets and identify the variables most predictive for determining a cardiac event, such as age, sex and a person's specific troponin levels (using a high sensitivity troponin-I blood test**) and blood sample timing.