Health<\/a> officials estimated that thousands of high-risk patients will be identified within the first year of the program, lining them up for preventative care. <\/p>\n\u201cBy using the clinical information already available to us, this program enables us to identify patients who may benefit from earlier follow-up, often before symptoms appear, and ensures they are connected to the right care at the right time \u2014 helping to close critical gaps in detection, improving those patients\u2019 long-term outcomes and overall quality of life,\u201d said Dr. Samer Kazziha, chief medical director of the McLaren Heart & Vascular Institute. <\/p>\n
The AI-powered Carebricks platform is part of a partnership with Bunkerhill Health, a California-based biotech company. It uses algorithms approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to measure incidental coronary artery calcium and incidental aortic valve calcium — indicators for common forms of heart disease that can worsen over time if left untreated. <\/p>\n
In its first year, McLaren plans to have the program screen about 40,000 CT scans that were performed for other medical reasons from the last year. That could be for complaints of trouble breathing or chest pain, or to look for signs of pneumonia or lung disease. <\/p>\n
Opportunities to detect heart disease early have largely been missed due to the need for specialized CT imaging scans and time-consuming reviews by a clinician. The new program will greatly speed up that process and allow for more patients to be screened. <\/p>\n
Dr. Justin Klamerus, McLaren\u2019s chief clinical officer, likened the program to the discovery of DNA \u201cin terms of its transformative powers for medicine.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cMuch of cardiovascular disease is preventable if we could recognize signs earlier,\u201d Klamerus said. <\/p>\n
McLaren said it\u2019s the first Michigan health system to deploy the AI program for scanning existing CT scans. Health systems across the country are experimenting with AI to improve business and clinical operations, including for medical documentation during patient appointments. <\/p>\n
In the U.S., cardiovascular disease is the No.1 killer annually. It was responsible for 26,221 deaths in Michigan in 2024, or about 25.5% of all deaths. <\/p>\n
McLaren has facilities throughout the state, including in Bay City, Caro, Cheboygan, Clare, Flint, Lansing, Lapeer, Mount Clemens, Mount Pleasant, Petoskey and Pontiac. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Michigan health system is turning to AI to help identify patients at risk of cardiovascular disease, without…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-291199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}