Northwestern Medicine is working with a San Francisco tech startup to bring artificial intelligence to heart disease screenings.
Northwestern Medicine announced Thursday that it has partnered with Eko, a startup that has developed a cardiac monitoring platform, to more accurately screen for valvular heart disease. The Chicago-based hospital system is conducting a study to demonstrate that Eko's digital stethoscopes and AI algorithms can interpret heart sounds accurately to help screen for pathologic heart murmurs and valvular heart disease, Northwestern Medicine said in a news release.
Eko's digital stethoscope aims to improve upon the centuries-old traditional doctor's stethoscope by wirelessly streaming heart and lung sounds to its HIPAA-compliant software. The FDA-cleared digital stethoscope can help physicians more accurately detect if something is wrong with a person's heartbeat, the company says.
"If proven effective, Eko's platform could be a much simpler, lower cost way to identify patients with heart disease," James Thomas, director of the Northwestern Center for Heart Valve Disease, said in a statement.
By using machine learning, Eko's digital stethoscope can combine the data from tens of thousands of heart sound patterns to detect irregularities.
Eko is planning to enroll 1,000 patients in the latest study, including 800 at Northwestern Medicine. The clinical trial is part of the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute's new Center for Artificial Intelligence, which looks to develop new products and train physicians on new AI technologies.
Eko, founded in 2013, has raised $7.8 million to date from investors including ARTIS Ventures and the Mayo Clinic.
