"Artificial intelligence will help us cardiologists to manage the monitoring of large amounts of data."

For our latest blog post, we spoke to Prof. Dr. Alexander Leber about the latest developments in modern telecardiology and obtained feedback on our inCareNet HF solution, which Prof. Leber has been working with for several years now. Read more in the following interview.

About our guest

Prof. Dr. med. Alexander Leber has been Director and Chief Physician of the Isar Heart Center and the Clinic for Cardiology in Munich since 2013. After studying medicine in Erlangen, Rennes and Cape Town, he worked as a clinician and scientist at internationally renowned institutions, including the Klinikum Großhadern at LMU Munich and Sunnybrook Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is known for his expertise in cardiac imaging and interventional cardiology. He is also the founder of iATROS, the first virtual heart center, and has done pioneering work in the field of digital medicine.

Prof. Leber, how do you assess the role of telemonitoring in modern heart failure treatment, and what advantages do you see specifically for cardiologists and for patients?

Leber: Telemonitoring plays a crucial role in modern heart failure treatment. At the Isar Clinic in Munich, where I have been Director and Chief Physician of the Isar Heart Center and the Clinic for Cardiology since 2013, we work with inCareNet HF from SEMDATEX to provide patients with the best possible care at home. Fortunately, telemonitoring for heart failure is now part of standard care and we were one of the first clinics to establish a telemonitoring center in order to be able to offer our patients this innovative form of care.

What advances do you see in telecardiology that could revolutionize the management of heart failure patients for cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons?

There will be progress on four key levels:

Firstly, artificial intelligence (AI) is already helping us to recognize data patterns that are relevant to prognosis. In the future, AI will support us even better in recognizing things that we would never see as clinicians. In my view, this is the most exciting field, because it will fundamentally change medicine by opening the way to truly personalized medicine. Secondly, artificial intelligence will help us cardiologists to manage the monitoring of large amounts of data. In the Heart Failure (HF) program, for example, every patient transmits at least one ECG, blood pressure values and weight data every day. Added to this are the parameters of the implants. In future, even more data points will be retrieved daily and continuously, because the more data, the better the monitoring. Only with the help of AI will we be able to process and evaluate these volumes of data efficiently. Thirdly, telemedicine programs will be expanded in the future to include the topic of patient health literacy, as many studies have shown that patient education makes a major contribution to improving outcomes. Innovative app solutions, which increasingly also work with voice recognition and chatbots, will bring this important pillar to the patient world in a scalable way. Analogously, this will never be scalable due to a lack of resources. And finally, fourthly, another outcome-relevant area will be individualized medication management. We are currently a long way from patients receiving the optimal drug therapy and then also the correct dosage. In the case of heart failure in particular, there are also dynamic changes that need to be adapted to the stage of the disease. Here too, artificial intelligence will assist doctors and patients in the future.

You work with inCareNet HF in your day-to-day clinical work. What are the advantages of this solution and how has it changed your work?

The inCareNet HF platform enables us to continuously monitor key vital parameters and react to changes at an early stage. This allows us to efficiently prevent decompensations, which are common in this patient population, and thus save patients from having to stay in hospital. This improves the patients' sense of security and quality of life.

To what extent has communication with the patient changed?

It has improved as they can now actively participate in their health monitoring. For doctors, the inCareNet HF platform offers a key solution for integrating telemonitoring into everyday clinical practice.

How is the external data collected?

Data from the patient is recorded via external sensors such as a blood pressure monitor, scales and a 3-channel ECG and transmitted directly to our monitoring platform via the mobile network. The system is optimally adapted to the requirements for HF monitoring. Alarms if, for example, weight is exceeded are clearly displayed and the measures we initiate can be documented very easily.

Does this also apply to implant data?

Yes, implant data is also transferred directly. A major advantage of the solution for patients is its plug and play character. There is no need for cumbersome pairing via Bluetooth or WLAN with an app, so the patient can transfer data immediately with the first measurement.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges for healthcare systems worldwide and how could they be counteracted?

The healthcare system is facing a number of challenges. On the one hand, the need for medical care is increasing due to the ageing population and the rise in chronic illnesses. On the other hand, the systems are confronted with a serious shortage of specialists. Added to this is the ongoing urbanization, which means that it will be almost impossible to ensure adequate care in rural regions in the future unless both problems are tackled with the help of digital technologies. Telemedicine must be set up in such a way that specialist medical care can be guaranteed.

What could these look like?

These could be digital chronic care programs, for example, which reduce complications and prevent morbidity, even in older populations. The telemonitoring program for heart failure is a first step; now this innovative care must be extended quickly and unbureaucratically to all chronic diseases. It is long overdue to respond to the poor reality of care in Germany for patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity or lipometabolic diseases, for example. With the help of intelligent telemedicine programs, all of these diseases can be treated much better and more effectively, thus preventing complications such as heart failure, heart attacks and strokes.