Triple Cardiovascular Disease Detection With an Artificial Intelligence-enabled Stethoscope
- Conditions
- Heart Valve DiseasesHeart FailureAtrial FibrillationHeart MurmursHeart Failure With Reduced Ejection FractionCongestive Heart Failure
- Interventions
- Device: AI-stethoscope
- Registration Number
- NCT05987670
- Lead Sponsor
- Imperial College London
- Brief Summary
Heart failure (HF) is a condition in which the heart cannot pump blood adequately. It is increasingly common, consumes 4% of the UK National Health Service (NHS) budget and is deadlier than most cancers. Early diagnosis and treatment of HF improves quality of life and survival. Unacceptably, 80% of patients have their HF diagnosed only when very unwell, requiring an emergency hospital admission, with worse survival and higher treatment costs to the NHS. This is largely because General Practitioners (GPs) have no easy-to-use tools to check for suspected HF, with patients having to rely on a long and rarely completed diagnostic pathway involving blood tests and hospital assessment.
The investigators have previously demonstrated that an artificial intelligence-enabled stethoscope (AI-stethoscope) can detect HF in 15 seconds with 92% accuracy (regardless of age, gender or ethnicity) - even before patients develop symptoms. While the GP uses the stethoscope, it records the heart sounds and electrical activity, and uses inbuilt artificial intelligence to detect HF.
The goal of this clinical trial is to determine the clinical and cost-effectiveness of providing primary care teams with the AI-stethoscope for the detection of heart failure. The main questions it aims to answer are if provision of the AI-stethoscope:
1. Increases overall detection of heart failure
2. Reduces the proportion of patients being diagnosed with heart failure following an emergency hospital admission
3. Reduces healthcare system costs
200 primary care practices across North West London and North Wales, UK, will be recruited to a cluster randomised controlled trial, meaning half of the primary care practices will be randomly assigned to have AI-stethoscopes for use in direct clinical care, and half will not. Researchers will compare clinical and cost outcomes between the groups.
- Detailed Description
Triple Cardiovascular Disease Detection with Artificial Intelligence-enabled Stethoscope (TRICORDER) is an open label, cluster randomised controlled trial. The aim is to determine whether use of an artificial intelligence-enabled stethoscope (AI-stethoscope) in UK Primary Care improves community-based detection of heart failure (HF), compared with usual care. 200 primary care practices in North West London (UK) will be randomised to receive the AI-stethoscope (intervention arm) or continue with usual care (control arm). The intervention arm will use the AI-stethoscope in routine clinical practice. Outcomes will be measured using pooled primary and secondary care clinical and cost-data, as well as clinician questionnaires.
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 200
- Primary care practices that care for adult patients and have the ability to request natriuretic peptide blood testing
- Primary care practices within the NIHR North West London Clinical Research Network or Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.
- Poor WiFi and/or mobile data connectivity within primary care consulting rooms
- No face-to-face patient consultations
Study & Design
- Study Type
- INTERVENTIONAL
- Study Design
- PARALLEL
- Arm && Interventions
Group Intervention Description Intervention AI-stethoscope Receive 3-6 AI-stethoscopes (Eko DUO, Eko Health Inc, CA, USA) including artificial intelligence software for detection of: 1. Reduced left ventricular ejection fraction \<40% 2. Atrial fibrillation 3. Cardiac murmurs
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Ratio of route to diagnosis of heart failure (co-primary) between emergency and community-based pathways 24 months Difference in ratio of the incidence of coded diagnoses of HF via hospital admission-based versus community-based pathways.
Incidence of heart failure (co-primary) 24 months Difference in incidence of coded new diagnoses of heart failure (HF)
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Device therapy 24 months New implantation of cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) and/or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD)
Cost-consequence (AF) 24 months Cost-consequence analysis (form of health economic evaluation) for diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, stratified by route to diagnosis. Presented in pounds sterling.
Determinants of uptake and utilisation 24 months Determinants of utilisation of AI-stethoscope in primary care (clinician questionnaires)
Incidence of atrial fibrillation 24 months New coded diagnoses of atrial fibrillation (AF)
Incidence of valvular heart disease 24 months New coded diagnoses of valvular heart disease (VHD)
Cost-consequence (HFrEF) 24 months Cost-consequence analysis (form of health economic evaluation) for diagnosis of HFrEF, stratified by route to diagnosis. Presented in pounds sterling.
Proportion of patients prescribed guideline-directed medical therapy 24 months Proportion of patients prescribedguideline-directed medical therapy (HF, AF, VHD)
Cost-consequence (VHD) 24 months Cost-consequence analysis (form of health economic evaluation) for diagnosis of VHD, stratified by route to diagnosis. Presented in pounds sterling.
Patient quality of life 24 months Healthy Days at Home (patient-level analysis)
Health service utilisation 24 months Health service utilisation for diagnostics e.g. rates of request for echocardiography, electrocardiography, primary care appointments. Collected from NHS organisation business intelligence repositories and UK Trusted Research Environments.
Uptake and utilisation 24 months Differential rates of uptake and utilisation of AI-stethoscope in primary care
Trial Locations
- Locations (1)
NHS North West London Integrated Care System
🇬🇧London, United Kingdom