When it comes to identifying a heart attack, every minute counts — and according to the British Heart Foundation, every 10-minute delay in treatment can lead to an extra 3.3 deaths per 100 patients. So, to help speed up the time to treatment, a team of researchers from the University of Mississippi developed wearable technology that can accurately detect heart attacks up to two times faster than traditional methods.
“When a patient is having a heart attack, the sooner you can treat them, the less likely they are to have permanent damage,” Kasem Khalil, co-author of a new study describing the tech, said in a news release, adding: “For this issue, a few minutes or even a few extra seconds is going to give this person the care they need before it becomes worse.”
Using artificial intelligence and advanced mathematics, he and his team created a tiny chip that analyzes electrocardiograms — aka records of electric signals in the heart — to identify a heart attack right away. When embedded in a wearable device, like a smartwatch, the chip displayed 92.4% accuracy, higher than many other detection techniques. Currently, most patients who suspect they’re experiencing a heart attack must go to a medical facility or hospital for confirmation.
“Our target was not only to increase performance for classifying heart attacks,” explained Khalil. “We are also focusing on the design. If we want to make this device a usable machine for any person, that means it has to be something lightweight and economic.”
Tamador Mohaidat, a doctoral student in Khalil’s lab, said the impetus for developing the chip was to offer people a truly practical tool. “We wanted to be able to implement this in a way that is real. This is portable hardware that can be in wearable or monitoring devices,” she said. “This method will save lives because we can monitor the heart in real time.”
And the innovation has potential for uses beyond heart attacks. “We want to be able to predict or identify many problems using technology like this,” Khalil added. “Whether that’s heart attacks or seizures or dementia. The detection of a disease or condition depends on the disease itself, but we’re working to find faster, more efficient ways of doing that.”
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