By Sarah Atwood
The Detroit News
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The University of Michigan has been awarded a two-year, $5.5 million grant to develop an artificial intelligence-integrated sensor to help save those who have sudden cardiac arrest.
The American Heart Association awarded the money to UM, along with $5 million to the California-based Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, to conduct research that specifically explores ways AI can be used to improve the screening and treatment of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.
Researchers with the UM Max Harry Weil Institute for Critical Care Research and Innovation will develop a device to ease one of the most difficult parts of giving care to patients, lead researcher Dr. Cindy Hsu said.
Currently, responders aren’t easily able to tell if the care they’re giving to a patient is working and sending blood to the heart. And the longer first responders take to give CPR to a patient, the less likely the patient will have a successful outcome, Hsu said.
Hsu said this issue led to her applying for the AHA grant earlier this spring. She saw the hundreds of thousands of lives that are claimed yearly in the United States due to sudden cardiac arrest and thought a more personalized, rather than a “one-size-fits-all,” approach could save more lives.
“For other big killers like cancer, we know the patients’ tumor genetics and can tailor their treatments accordingly,” Hsu said. “But for cardiac arrest, every patient gets the same exact resuscitation protocol regardless of their individual physiology.”
‘INSIGHT - CPR’
Hsu’s team will develop a non-invasive device, called “INSIGHT-CPR,” that will allow responders to see what’s working and what isn’t for each case of sudden cardiac arrest.
The device, a wearable sensor that will wrap around a wrist or finger, will transmit the patient’s blood pressure reading to a monitor. This allows rescuers to assess and refine techniques, like the placement of their hands during chest compressions and the type and timing of medications given.
It will also remove a big issue when treating sudden cardiac arrest today, Hsu said. A catheter is traditionally inserted into the patient to measure blood pressure and is difficult to insert while giving CPR, she said.
But a working, commercial version of the sensor is still years away. Hardware must be developed to track and measure neural networks during a cardiac arrest. When those are done, the device must be tested in animal control trials, Hsu said.
The Weir Insititute will partner with other university partners like Michigan Medicine and the UM College of Engineering, as well as the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the East Anglian Air Ambulance in the United Kingdom, and the consultancy group Blue Cottage of CannonDesign to develop and test the device.
The team anticipates that, when completed, the commercial device will have a market ranging from emergency services outside of the hospital, within hospitals and in combat zones.
“Even if we make just a 10% improvement in survival outcomes, that saves 60,000 adult lives and 2,000 pediatric lives every year,” Hsu said.
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