Liverpool Hospital to use AI to assist cardiologists in decision making

Sydney’s Liverpool Hospital is developing an AI solution to assist cardiologists in surveying vast volumes of cardiology related literature and guidelines to aid decision-making in clinical practice.

As Cardiologists face an ever-evolving medical field, they need to keep up to date with the available evidence to practice cardiology.

To address this challenge, Liverpool Hospital has partnered with Microsoft to conduct a thought experiment to explore the potential of using generative AI to create a prototype that allows a clinician to interact with an extensive body of literature from the field of cardiology.

‘The Cardiology Canon’, was built using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, and programmed on clinical trials from the past 40 years and guidelines from eminent cardiac societies in Australia, Europe and the United States.

The Microsoft Technology Centre team processed more than 500 individual documents and 80,000 pages to create a cognitive vector search index and made the solution accessible via a web application.

Dr Hao Tran, cardiology advanced trainee at Liverpool Hospital said they worked with Microsoft technologists to create a “bespoke” prototype to allow cardiologists and anyone training in the field to query vast volumes of literature to answer clinical questions or make nuanced comparisons, traversing the significant body of literature.

“The solution also successfully generated a comprehensive six-day training program on aortic stenosis, a common clinical problem among patients and generated comprehensive learning resources in hours, rather than days,” he said.

“It was presented at the Liverpool Cardiology Academy academic seminar with Microsoft collaborators Viren Joseph, Leon Smith and Daniel Xu and was championed by senior Liverpool Hospital cardiologists Professor Craig Juergens and Dr Sidney Lo.

He added, “It’s been a truly collaborative project that I believe will greatly benefit cardiologists and patients.”

A report by Microsoft and the Tech Council of Australia highlighted significant economic and productivity opportunities of generative AI for Australia.

It identified healthcare as one of the four key economic sectors poised to benefit from the technology, demonstrating that it could contribute between $5 billion and $13 billion in value annually to the sector in Australia by 2030.