Cardiovascular disease, clinical research, digital health

Sophia Antipolis The first platform to combine real-world cardiology data from millions of people in multiple European countries is set to advance research aimed at improving heart health. The EU-funded DataTools4Heart (DT4H) project is backed by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and coordinated by the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine lab (BCN-AIM), University of Barcelona, Spain. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally.2 Until now, cardiology data that could advance research and healthcare has remained unused in hospitals across Europe. This is due to data privacy requirements and variations in data formats and languages. To tackle these challenges, DT4H will extract, translate, and reuse data in a federated manner, i.e. without the information being shared with anyone or transferred out of the hospital. DT4H will use data that hospitals already hold in electronic health records. This will include structured information, such as diagnoses, medications, diagnostic measurements and procedures, and unstructured information including referral letters, discharge letters, clinical notes, radiology reports and surgical reports.Eight hospitals covering seven languages (Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, English, Czech, Italian and Romanian) will test out the system over the next two years using clinical questions from their outpatient and emergency departments. Multilingual, AI-powered virtual assistants will help clinician researchers to navigate through the platform and data.Researchers from across the globe will have access to an initial version of the platform through a web portal in October 2024. The model will be continually updated and improved with user feedback until the end of the project and final release of the platform in October 2026. Dr. Gkontra said: “We hope this innovative project will improve heart health by unlocking vast amounts of currently unused data to address critical clinical questions.”