Health Innovation Manchester’s Smart Heart project was highly commended during this year’s Health Tech Awards.

The awards, which took place on 3 October 2019, celebrate and showcase projects, teams, technology and organisations across health and care that are making a real difference to the delivery of patient care.

The Smart Hearts project, which uses data from implanted devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators to transform care for patients with heart failure, was highly commended in the  Partnership of the Year category and was a finalist in the #HealthTechtoShoutAbout category.

Cardiovascular disease is a major health priority in Greater Manchester (GM) with higher mortality and morbidity rates than the UK average.

• 25,000 people have diagnosed heart failure – just under 1% of the GM population
• During 2015/16 there were 4330 admissions in GM with a primary diagnosis of heart failure
• The cost of these admissions is over £17,000,000

The Smart Hearts project brings together industry, academia and the health and care system to address some of the challenges posed by heart failure including improving care pathways and reducing admissions.

Around 2,500 patients in GM with heart failure have implantable devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) which already transmit data onto a cloud platform (including thoracic impedance, arrhythmia burden, percentage of pacing, diurnal heart rate variability and patient activity).

Our industry, academic and health and care partners are using an algorithm to detect early deterioration from data flows from approximately 500 of these patients and their devices. These insights flow in near real time into a new operating model for treating heart failure at home.

The project aims to demonstrate improved outcomes for patients and the health economy by detecting early deterioration and preventing hospital admissions.

Data is being used to demonstrate the efficacy of the intervention and run machine learning algorithms to improve prediction. We are also using real world evidence and artificial intelligence (AI) to look for missed opportunities for implantable devices (for both therapeutic and diagnostic purposes) and to accelerate the deployment of devices to a wider population suitable for these treatments.

The project is brings together a consortium of members including:

• Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT)
• University of Manchester (UoM)
• North West EHealth (NWEH)
• Medtronic
• Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP)
• Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust (SRFT)

The project is also supported by an expert reference group that includes the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), the British Heart Foundation and local commissioners and providers of care, through the involvement of the 10 GM localities in our Healthy Hearts programme.

The project commenced in February 2019 and is already demonstrating that data from the devices can be used to create actionable insights including:

• Modifying the pathway to identify “at risk” patients more quickly with more patients benefitting from earlier interventions
• Increased the number of actionable alerts from devices by 60%
• Identified that approximately 70% of alerts generated have a treatable medical issue including half of these having an issue beyond heart failure
• Detected undiagnosed heart failure in the community setting and routed to heart failure services