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Hundreds of Brits going into hospital could soon have the rough date they will die estimated by an AI death calculator.
Using the results of a single electrocardiogram (ECG) test — which takes minutes and records the electrical activity of the heart — it is able to detect hidden health issues that doctors might not be able to spot.
The programme, called AI-ECG risk estimation or AIRE, has proven in studies to correctly identify risk of death in the 10 years after the ECG, with up to 78 per cent accuracy.
The tech will be trialled at two London NHS trusts from the middle of next year, but experts hope it will be used across the health service within five years.
Dr Arunashis Sau, a cardiology registrar at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust — one of the two trusts involved — said the aim of AIRE was not to develop something to replace doctors, but to create something 'superhuman'.
Using the results of these electrocardiogram (ECG) tests (pictured) — which record the electrical activity of the heart — Aire detects issues in the organ's structure that medics may not be able to see
The tech 'reads' the ECG results to uncover patterns in the electrical signals and analyse genetic information from the heart's structure to detect issues such as heart rhythm problems and heart failure before they fully develop.
It then gives a prediction figure, measured in years, of a patient's risk level.
Dr Sau added: 'The goal here is to try and use the ECG as a way to identify people that are at higher risk, who will then maybe benefit from other tests that could tell us more about what's going on.
'ECG is a very common and very cheap test, but that could then be used to guide more detailed testing that could then change how we manage patients and potentially reduce the risk of anything bad happening.
'One key distinction is that the goal here was to do something that was superhuman.
'So not replace or speed up something that a doctor could do, but to do something that a doctor cannot do from looking at heart tracing.
It is understood several hundred patients will be recruited for the first trial, which also involves Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, with numbers scaled up for future studies.
Research published today in the journal, Lancet Digital Health, found AIRE could also predict future heart failure — a condition in which the heart stops being able to pump efficiently, leading to a raft of health problems and an early death — in nearly eight in ten of cases.
In the study, the team trained the technology using a dataset of 1.16 million ECG test results from 189,539 patients.
They found it detected future serious heart rhythm problems in three quarters (76 per cent) of cases, and future atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease — where the arteries narrow, making blood flow difficult — in seven in ten cases.
So would you want to know when you might die ?
Using the results of a single electrocardiogram (ECG) test — which takes minutes and records the electrical activity of the heart — it is able to detect hidden health issues that doctors might not be able to spot.
The programme, called AI-ECG risk estimation or AIRE, has proven in studies to correctly identify risk of death in the 10 years after the ECG, with up to 78 per cent accuracy.
The tech will be trialled at two London NHS trusts from the middle of next year, but experts hope it will be used across the health service within five years.
Dr Arunashis Sau, a cardiology registrar at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust — one of the two trusts involved — said the aim of AIRE was not to develop something to replace doctors, but to create something 'superhuman'.
Using the results of these electrocardiogram (ECG) tests (pictured) — which record the electrical activity of the heart — Aire detects issues in the organ's structure that medics may not be able to see
The tech 'reads' the ECG results to uncover patterns in the electrical signals and analyse genetic information from the heart's structure to detect issues such as heart rhythm problems and heart failure before they fully develop.
It then gives a prediction figure, measured in years, of a patient's risk level.
Dr Sau added: 'The goal here is to try and use the ECG as a way to identify people that are at higher risk, who will then maybe benefit from other tests that could tell us more about what's going on.
'ECG is a very common and very cheap test, but that could then be used to guide more detailed testing that could then change how we manage patients and potentially reduce the risk of anything bad happening.
'One key distinction is that the goal here was to do something that was superhuman.
'So not replace or speed up something that a doctor could do, but to do something that a doctor cannot do from looking at heart tracing.
It is understood several hundred patients will be recruited for the first trial, which also involves Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, with numbers scaled up for future studies.
Research published today in the journal, Lancet Digital Health, found AIRE could also predict future heart failure — a condition in which the heart stops being able to pump efficiently, leading to a raft of health problems and an early death — in nearly eight in ten of cases.
In the study, the team trained the technology using a dataset of 1.16 million ECG test results from 189,539 patients.
They found it detected future serious heart rhythm problems in three quarters (76 per cent) of cases, and future atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease — where the arteries narrow, making blood flow difficult — in seven in ten cases.
So would you want to know when you might die ?
