VentureBeat/Midjourney

Whenever a patient gets a CT scan at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), the resulting images are automatically sent off to the cardiology department, analyzed by AI and assigned a cardiac risk score. 

In just a few months, thanks to a simple algorithm, AI has flagged several patients at high cardiovascular risk. The CT scan doesn’t have to be related to the heart; the patient doesn’t have to have heart problems. Every scan automatically triggers an evaluation. 

It is straightforward preventative care enabled by AI, allowing the medical facility to finally start utilizing their vast amounts of data. 

“The data is just sitting out there,” Peter McCaffrey, UTMB’s chief AI officer, told VentureBeat. “What I love about this is that AI doesn’t have to do anything superhuman. It’s performing a low intellect task, but at very high volume, and that still provides a lot of value, because we’re constantly finding things that we miss.”

He acknowledged, “We know we miss stuff. Before, we just didn’t have the tools to go back and find it.” 

How AI helps UTMB determine cardiovascular risk

Like many healthcare facilities, UTMB is applying AI across a number of areas. One of its first use cases is cardiac risk screening. Models have been trained to scan for incide...