Arrhythmical Risk Indicator (ARI) – cardiovascular images to reduce the need of pacemakers

Prosjektet Arrhythmic Risk Indicator (ARI) fikk støtte i fjor fra Norges forskningsråd gjennom en Kvalifiseringsstøtte administrert av Validé AS for å validere teknologien og utforske dens implementering i dagens marked. Prosjektet avsluttes nå i desember, og vi er glade for å se at det vil få muligheten til å samle inn mer data for å teste modellen videre. ARI gir mulighet til å oppdage risiko for hjertestans hos pasienter med arytmier knyttet til tidligere hjertesvikt, noe som gir et mer presist beslutningsgrunnlag når det gjelder å implementere pacemakere hos pasienter i risikogruppen.

Cardiovascular diseases are still the main cause of death globally, and the only way to prevent a cardiac arrest is the use of a pacemaker (ICD). But this procedure comes with high costs and other risks for health. Cardiologists can track how many times the device has been activated in the body to avoid a cardiac arrest. In many cases, the ICD is never activated, meaning that those patients could have survived without the device. Currently, there is no way to predict which of those patients will need the ICD and which ones won't, and so the ICD is implanted in most of the cases. The ARI technology has the potential to become a new biomarker for prognosis, helping cardiologists with decision-making, and giving the MR scans the ability to offer much more information of the same MR image. A scan that can offer this service to medical specialists will have a notably increased value and save costs and efforts to the health system.