New Delhi, Jan 29 Amid growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, a new large-scale clinical trial published in The Lancet on Thursday showed that an AI-enabled stethoscope can boost early detection of various heart diseases.
A team of Spanish researchers found that an AI-enabled stethoscope helped doctors in identifying early signs of serious heart conditions, such as heart failure, arrhythmias, and valve disease, in primary care clinics.
The study found that introducing the technology to doctors led to a substantially faster and more frequent detection -- nearly twice as many new heart failure cases and three times as many detections of irregular heart rhythms -- of these cardiovascular conditions, indicating that the device performed well.
“Primary care faces a growing workload and limited resources, making it the ideal recipient of the efficiencies promised by artificial intelligence (AI). The potential of AI to improve diagnostic accuracy through decision support systems or image analysis is clear. However, implementing these tools into primary care workflows remains challenging,” said corresponding author Sergio Cinza-Sanjurjo from Santiago de Compostela University, Spain.
The TRICORDER trial is the first cluster randomised controlled implementation trial (RCIT) of a clinical AI technology on a national scale, involving 205 UK NHS general practices and more than 1.5 million registered patients in the UK.
The AI stethoscope integrates three algorithms designed to detect heart failure, irregular heart rhythms, and valve disease during routine appointments.
Over the 12-month study period, doctors performed nearly 13,000 AI-assisted cardiac examinations.
While the overall heart failure detection rates were similar between the groups (1,342 new cases in the AI group versus 1,984 in usual care), subgroup analyses showed that patients examined with the AI stethoscope had significantly higher detection rates compared to patients who were not examined with the AI device.
The trial suggests that AI tools such as smart stethoscopes could help physicians detect heart problems earlier in routine care, but only if they’re properly integrated into day-to-day clinical operations.
Despite strong algorithmic accuracy, real-world benefit depended heavily on clinician engagement and workflow integration.
Many practices reported declining use of the AI stethoscope over time, citing extra steps in routine work and limited electronic health record integration as key barriers.
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