AI heart scans ‘could save the health service’

‘There is about £2.2billion spent on pathology services in the NHS. You may be able to reduce that by 50 per cent’

ARTIFICIAL intelligence that can diagnose heart disease and lung cancer from scans could be in use by the NHS within months.

Researchers at an Oxford hospital have developed a system which they claim could save billions by picking up such diseases much earlier.

Sir John Bell, the Government’s healthcare tsar, told BBC News: “There is about £2.2 billion spent on pathology services in the NHS. You may be able to reduce that by 50 per cent. AI may be the thing that saves the NHS.”

Cardiologists currently diagnose problems by monitoring the timing of the heartbeat in scans, but these are not always accurate. Of 60,000 heart scans carried out each year, 12,000 are reportedly misdiagnosed at an estimated cost of £600million.

The artificial intelligence (AI) system developed at the John Radcliffe Hospital is said to diagnose heart scans more accurately, picking up details doctors cannot see. The technology has been tested in trials in six cardiology units, with results to be published this year.

Prof Paul Leeson, a cardiologist who developed the system, said data indicates that it had greatly outperformed his fellow heart specialists.

The system, called Ultromics, was trained to identify potential problems in the scans of 1,000 patients treated over the past seven years, along with information about whether they went on to have heart problems.

“As cardiologists, we accept that we don’t always get it right at the moment,” Prof Leeson said.

“But now there is a possibility that we may be able to do better.”

If results are confirmed, it will be available free of charge to NHS hospitals across the country this summer.

Prof Sir Malcolm Grant, the chairman of NHS England, said back in 2015 that AI would bring NHS patients a greater quality of care by better diagnosing medical conditions and personalising treatment.