AI to assist patients recovering from heart failure

Rehabilitation and adapting to a new lifestyle are crucial to recovery following heart failure, but nevertheless prove to be all too difficult a task for many patients. The European project TIMELY, which is coordinated by the University of Amsterdam, intends to develop an eHealth platform using AI that will offer patients recovering from heart failure personalised monitoring and coaching services as they work to achieve a new, healthy lifestyle. Heart disease has an enormous impact on patients, healthcare and society worldwide. Heart failure is usually the result of a prolonged interplay of physiological characteristics, risk factors and behaviour. Rehabilitation following a heart attack, where patients learn to adapt their lifestyle, is the most important type of intervention there is to speed up recovery and prevent a relapse - and yet less than half of patients take part in programmes of this kind, with many participants prematurely dropping out. In addition, patients often fall back into their old behavioural patterns and habits that played a key role in bringing on heart failure. As such, any gains made through rehabilitation evaporate in the long term.