Innovation Program Making Inroads With Collaborations on AI, Digital Technology

The ACC continues to make headway with its Innovation Program, recently announcing collaborations with GE Healthcare and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), respectively. Both projects will move the College and the profession forward in terms of best practices in key areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies.

Specifically, GE Healthcare is collaborating with the ACC through support of and participation in the ACC's Applied Health Innovation Consortium for the purpose of building a roadmap for AI and digital technology in cardiology and developing new strategies for improved health outcomes.

The Consortium is designed to bring together academic, clinical, industry and technology partners and patient advocates to collaborate in the digital transformation of health care and achieve trust in the development of clinical evidence and guidance. GE Healthcare will lend its unique perspective as a leading global medical technology and digital solutions innovator. The GE Healthcare's Edison platform forms the technological basis for the company's many AI offerings that are an integral part of its advanced cardiac technology used by clinicians in the diagnosis and treatment of more than 145 million hearts each year.

While clinicians find value in using technology to better monitor and manage a patient's health, the large variety of devices available on the market today sometimes make it difficult to determine which type is best suited to track a specific disease. Both the ACC and CTA are working together to help mitigate this issue through the development of a framework for device and app makers to provide deeper understanding of products that manage cardiovascular health.

As part of the CTA collaboration, a work group including representatives from Abbott, BioIntellisense, HP, Omron Healthcare Inc., Philips, Samsung Electronics, Valencell and Well Being Digital Limited (WBD101), will look at three use cases of devices – prevention, screening or diagnosis, and health management or treatment – with the goal of releasing the best practices document by the end of the year.

"The digital transformation of health care delivery is a priority for the ACC, and we are committed to leading the way in finding and implementing innovative ways to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health," says ACC's John Rumsfeld, MD, PhD, FACC. "Through these collaborative efforts we're spanning health care and tech to change the future of health care delivery."

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