AI beats doctors at predicting heart disease deaths

The study, published in PLOS One, adds to the growing evidence that AI could revolutionise healthcare in the UK and beyond. So far, the emphasis has been on the potential of AI to help diagnose and treat various diseases, but these new findings suggest it could also help predict the likelihood of patients dying too. "It won't be long before doctors are routinely using these sorts of tools in the clinic to make better diagnoses and prognoses, which can help them decide the best ways to care for their patients," says Crick scientist Andrew Steele, first author of the paper. "Doctors already use computer-based tools to work out whether a patient is at risk of heart disease, and machine-learning will allow more accurate models to be developed for a wider range of conditions." The model was designed using the electronic health data of over 80,000 patients, collected as part of routine care, and available for researchers on the CALIBER platform.