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 Today in Health IT, we are discussing innovations in cardiac care, engineering hearts for Valentine's Day.

And this is from Texas A& M School of Engineering Medicine. My name is Sarah Richardson. I'm a former CIO for several healthcare systems, most notably with NHC and Optum and now president of community development at This Week Health, where we host a set of channels. And events dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.

Today's episode is brought to you by Chrome OS. Imagine a healthcare system where technology works seamlessly in the background, keeping your data secure, your teams connected and your patients at the center of care. visit this week, health. com slash Google Chrome OS to learn more.

And I am joined by Kate Gamble, managing editor here at this week health. Kate, welcome to the show. Thank you, Sarah, and Happy Valentine's Day. Yes. Happy Valentine's Day to you and Galentine's Day. I like that one. Yes, Galentine's Day. So you and I obviously have actually a husband's both named Dan, which I'm sure we have fun plans for Valentine's Day, but I have to ask.

The true leader, or man of the house is your dog, Ted. What do you have planned for Ted for Valentine's Day? You know me well. You go to Starbucks in the drive thru, they give you a pup cup, which is just a little cup filled with whipped cream. And something about that experience, my kids and Ted love so much.

We could have whipped cream here at home, but that's not as fun. We're gonna be going to Starbucks, getting him a pup cup. And I'm sure just You know, spoiling him as we do. I didn't know they had that. And I love the fact that's a thing at Starbucks. I'll keep that in mind for, I call them like stocking stuffers, but year round little wins for people is in a pinch.

If you send Kate a Starbucks gift card, then Ted's going to get a pup cup. As he should. As he should. And the kids might actually get something as well. But until then, what we're talking today. Very specifically about innovations in cardiac care engineering hearts for Valentine's Day. So this is a recent article from Texas A& M School of Engineering Medicine.

It highlights the innovative work of PhD students, Jack Wang and David Jiang, who are pioneering advancements in cardiac care by integrating engineering principles with medical research. Their effort. Aims to enhance heart health and prevent cardiovascular diseases offering promising avenues for future treatments.

. Some key points we're going to cover are Jack Wang's research about investigating biomechanical properties of arterial lesions and David Jiang's motivation and work inspired by his father's recovery through extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO.

Peace. Highlight an interdisciplinary approach. Both the students exemplify the fusion of engineering and medicine and using their diverse backgrounds to tackle complex health challenges. It's a supportive research environment. Cardiovascular Path Mechanics Laboratory at Texas A& M provides a collaborative setting that fosters this type of innovation and allowing researchers to pursue groundbreaking solutions in cardiac care.

More than anything, it's an emphasis on heart health awareness. We'll talk about how it underscores the importance of recognizing and supporting efforts in cardiac research, especially during heart health month that will inspire continued advancements in the field. So much to talk about. And as a CIO.

Understanding and supporting such interdisciplinary research is crucial, even if you don't have an academic arm in your facility. The integration of engineering and medical research can lead to the development of advanced diagnostic tools and personalized treatment plans. This necessitates robust health information systems to manage and the analysis of complex data.

CIOs today play a pivotal role in facilitating the adoption of these innovations within their healthcare. infrastructures. So let's just dive right in, Kate, and think about the role of interdisciplinary research. Foundationally, how does the fusion of engineering and medicine revolutionize something like cardiac care?

Yeah, this is a great topic and it's a little bit out of the box for us, but it taps into so many different things, one of which is innovation. And what that really means is, using tools that exist in different ways. And I think that this topic is so pertinent. So if you think about it historically, Cardiology and medical device innovation were separate fields.

Physicians focused on treatments, engineers built devices, and that's how it was. But now we're seeing research, which allows for real time data, predictive modeling, and biomechanical analysis to directly shape cardiac treatments. And for example, some of the researchers like Jack Wang, they're studying arterial lesions with biomechanics to predict which patients are at higher risk of rupturing, a major cause of heart attacks.

We actually had a news item recently about Cedars Sinai's Smitt Heart Institute in Los Angeles, which developed an AI method to detect atrial fibrillation from echocardiogram imaging. So the ability to stop cardiac events before they happen by combining imaging, computational models, and AI driven insights is really exciting and we're starting to see that the hospitals that have advanced health information systems will likely be key to integrating these new tools into clinical

Something we talk about often is moving to prevention and prediction versus just treatment after something occurs. It's a little bit of a new approach. It's about preventing acute coronary syndrome and cardiovascular disease is the number one killer. Globally, how does this research help a couple things to think about traditional cardiac risk assessments rely on factors like cholesterol, blood pressure, lifestyle, still important, but the new biomechanical models show stress and strain on interior walls.

Blood flow dynamics, which is where a lesion might rupture and the personalized risk analysis based on something we talk about over and over AI powered predictive models, which you and I know need to have bias review, audit review, training of the language models. But how does this change the way hospitals and doctors can approach cardiac care?

This has so much potential. Anytime you're talking about. Being able to predict instead of, treat after the fact it's absolutely huge. So we're talking about more personalized care instead of general risk factors, patients could get customized intervention plans and early intervention options.

So imagine using AI to predict who will need surgery before symptoms appear. That's a really powerful tool and something that I think. I'm excited to see more of what it can do in this whole cardiology realm. And so many inventions, this one was due to a personal motivation where David Jiang was inspired by his father's survival after heart failure.

How, Kate, does a personal experience shape innovation? Yeah, I think we've seen and heard a lot of really great stories over the years. There's really nothing like a personal experience to drive a researcher to find solutions that didn't exist before. And in his case, Cenk's motivation led him to develop more accessible and affordable cardiac devices, like computational methods that personalize treatments.

And that's so powerful to me. Anytime you talk about, accessibility, which we do and the need to improve it. But when it comes from a personal experience, it really just helps to drive that point home. And the human stories push technological breakthroughs.

So when a researcher has personal stakes, they're more driven to innovate. What about the personal connection? We talk about how it drives innovation. This is also going to take on a flavor of leadership. So when leaders combine the personal connection to make a difference, where do we see that show up?

So what we've seen time and time again is that great leaders, whether it's research or health IT, they lead with purpose. And when we hear Some of our friendlies at events and interviews, it makes such a difference when you can hear in someone's voice the passion they have for it. They're going to approach it differently.

And CIOs and hospital leaders who do connect emotionally with healthcare challenges, they're more effective at championing new solutions. If for no other reason than the fact that they're going to get this done, they're not going to rest until this is done. And that's that's going to lead to outcomes eventually.

And even directs hosting the Atlanta city tour dinner last week. And this has been true of every time we go to Atlanta. He said such a great mix of the CXOs. They talked about everything from communication challenges, project throughput, more than anything, AI specific to the passion they have for patients and families and the clear investment.

But they're making in one another across that city and across that region. We're seeing it again, more and more. And we go to the city tour dinners, the collaboration of the CXOs within a specific area, Atlanta to me, it sets the tone for other parts of the country. And that's all about the role of healthcare it in cardiac care innovation as an example.

So if you're the CIO and you're thinking about integrating these innovations into a hospital. What are some of the biggest challenges of getting the real time data into the right models? So I think that what it comes down to is that health IT systems, they need to be able to collect and analyze biometric and imaging data.

You need to integrate AI powered predictive tools into workflows. And you need to ensure secure and ethical data usage. We talked about that the other day, as far as the bias in AI, and that's such an important factor and something that can't get lost. Even when we're talking about these specific uses for AI.

Yeah, but are hospitals really ready for this level of AI driven prediction? That's a great question. So some of the the larger research hospitals, they're doing this. They're adopting AI assisted decision making, but not surprisingly, some of the community hospitals just don't have the infrastructure yet.

And that opens the door to what we really like to talk about, which is collaboration, which is sharing best practices, which is sharing ideas, and then forming unions where you can. So I think the biggest health IT opportunity is interoperability and getting AI models to work across EHR platforms seamlessly.

That's obviously a topic all in and of itself, but such an important part of this. And it makes me think about even our mission here at This Week Health and 229, we're about the interoperability of humans to a degree and sharing sense for people to work across communities, across cities, across regions.

And so it gives me such. Positivity when I think about just the future of a I the engineering of heart health as an example from this article. What's coming next in the field of a I powered cardiac care from the research that you were able to do? Yeah. And I want to second what you were alluding to.

This is exciting. It really is. And I love when we talk to CIOs who have say things like, we've spent so much time putting in the infrastructure. This is now where we can start to see, the power of AI tools. But when we talk about cardiac care, what we're going to see are powered heart monitoring wearables, which can track real time cardiac health.

Automated heart failure detection, which can predict when a patient needs intervention, so important. Bioengineered heart tissue, which uses 3D printing in stem cells to repair heart damage. 3D printing is another component that's so interesting, but really has great potential when it can be utilized for situations like this.

So I'm the IT executive listening today. What's my biggest takeaway from this article? Invest in AI friendly

infrastructures, and if you don't have one or if you don't know how to do that, reach out to your peers. There is a lot of great information on our podcasts at our summits about this. Push for collaboration between engineering and medical teams.

That's something that you always want to do, but especially when it comes to AI. And start planning for predictive analytics in patient care, because it's coming. And a lot of it's already happening today through decision support, but to your point, The AI infrastructures and capabilities, the models are all going to continue to proliferate at a speed, which maybe we can't keep up with.

So pick the case that you can keep up with.

Okay. Trivia time. It is Valentine's day. So we're going to talk about some heart health, fun facts. So before we wrap up, let's talk about Valentine's day. So Kate, how did the heart become a symbol of love? I would guess that since dove chocolates are in a heart shape this time of year, it has something to do with that because I love dark chocolate, but in reality, I think it has something to do with the heart's been associated with emotions since ancient Greece, actually.

So the modern heart shape came from medieval anatomical drawings. So there's an interesting tidbit. There is an interesting tidbit. I also now want to go eat chocolate. Thanks, too. Between Ted's Pub Cup and Dove chocolate, I'm like, I feel like a sugar bomb headed my way. And your heart beats over 100, 000 times a day.

That's 35 million times a year. So your heart literally works harder than any other muscle. Yeah, definitely. And that's why we hear people say, take care of your ticker. Let's talk about the first heart transplant.

So much has happened in that timeframe and what a great trajectory that we are seeing. Here's what I love too, you and I created a connection.

We've known each other for a very long time, even before we worked here, but we used to joke that we met through interviews, but we used to watch birds. So did you know that Valentine's day used to be about birds, like medieval Europeans believe that birds chose their mates on February 14th, which is what led to the romantic holiday theme.

Now I'll crack up because we have bird feeders all over our backyard, and I will just say that. I still watch a bunch of birds, but they are so messy. They have created like they fling their bird seed everywhere and I'm pulling more weeds than anything else, but we do have a whole backyard full of happy birds.

So maybe they'll all pair up today on Valentine's day and I'll have even more birds next time we chat about this. Yeah, I guess birds started it. They started this all with their romance. And of course we talked about it before, but dark chocolate is good for your heart. That's a great Valentine's tidbit.

So dark chocolate can help lower blood pressure and reduce heart disease risk. So I'm going to dive into those doves and I recommend you do the same. So at what point though, is it like that you go from being helpful to your heart to then try not to raise your blood sugar so much that you become like, Potential for type two diabetes as an example.

So there's a question out to our physicians that are listening. Like how much dark chocolate keeps your heart healthy versus keeping you, potentially out of a range for diabetes something we could research for sure. But it is, it's Valentine's day. And so what can health care leaders do today as we celebrate Valentine's day?

How do we protect the hearts that keep us going? Kate, what are some ideas in this space? So going back to, our story and what we were originally talking about explore how AI and engineering can revolutionize patient care. We're already seeing so much in this space and it's only going to get really more interesting, I think.

Ensure your HIT systems are ready for predictive medicine and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between tech and healthcare teams. Absolutely. And whether in love or in medicine, hearts always matter and the future of cardiac care depends on innovation, collaboration, and smart leadership. So let's make sure we're leading with intelligence and with our hearts as we go forward.

Remember to share this podcast with a friend or a colleague. Use it as a foundation for daily or weekly 📍 discussions on the topics that are relevant to you and the industry.

They can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Kate, happy Valentine's Day. Thank you. Same to you. Okay. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.