Entering the era of the ‘digital nurse’
Professor Leonard Hofstra from Amsterdam UMC told the session that big data can be used to mimic randomised controlled trials and then help design tools to enable cardiologists make better decisions, while Professor Lis Neubeck from Edinburgh Napier University looked at the evolving role of nursing in the digital world.
Posing the question “are we entering the era of the digital nurse,” she said there are challenges about how nurses utilise data and in preparing the work force to embrace the digital environment, while underlining the need to continue to keep the patient at the centre of digital health. “This is why nurses should have a very central role in developing systems and ensuring they are linked,” she added.
Another role for AI is in shaping cardiac rehabilitation programmes for patients to make them more consistent. At present, patients with similar cardiovascular disease profiles may be given widely varying exercise regimes by different clinicians.
Decision support systems for exercise prescription in cardiac rehabilitation are on the rise and can help address this but Dr Dominique Hansen, Professor of Exercise Physiology at Hasselt University in Belgium, said there remained a need for more data to “unequivocally confirm the practical and clinical benefits and feasibility.”
(MN)
Profile:
Paul Leeson is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford and Head of Oxford Cardiovascular Clinical Research Facility. He is also a Consultant Cardiologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, where he provides expertise in Cardiovascular Imaging, as well as General Cardiology and Cardiovascular Prevention through the Oxford Specialist Hypertension Clinic. He heads the Preventive Cardiology Research Group, based in the Oxford Cardiovascular Clinical Research Facility, which aims to improve how we identify and prevent heart disease in young people. The group works in three areas novel markers of early disease, young adult cardiovascular prevention trials, and AI.
Source: Healthcare in Europe
