Machine Learning Can Predict Heart Attack or Death More Accurately Than Humans

Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, has become more accurate than human medical professionals in predicting incidence of heart attack or death in patients at risk of coronary artery disease. Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, was more accurate than human medical professionals in predicting myocardial infarction (MI) or death among patients suspected of having coronary artery disease (CAD), according to an abstract presented at the 2019 International Conference on Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT, held May 12-14 in Lisbon, Portugal. Physicians routinely make treatment decisions using risk scores, which are based on few variables and are typically only moderately accurate for individual patients. Machine learning can use repetition and adjustment to exploit large quantities of data and identify complex patterns that may go unnoticed by humans. "Humans have a very hard time thinking further than three dimensions (a cube) or four dimensions (a cube through time)," said the study's lead researcher, Luis Eduardo Juarez-Orozco, MD, PhD, in a statement.