Heart Failure
Heart failure (HF) affects over 14 million in Europe, and is forecast to increase to 30 million by 2020.Pharmacological therapy confers some clinical benefit, but considerable morbidity remains accounting for 120,000 hospital admissions per year in the UK. Three year HF mortality is around 50% and the costs to the NHS are amongst the highest for a single disease. Healthcare technologies such as pacemakers that resynchronise the heart and left-ventricular assist devices that provide support for the failing heart are becoming key therapeutic options for these patients.Our theme strategy working closely with industrial partners and patient group representatives is to develop and adopt technologies that will lead to a step change in the management of heart failure across the patient journey and specifically lead to:
- Earlier diagnosis (2/3 of patients with heart failure are not know to clinical services and patient present very late with poor outcomes)
- Better stratification (heart failure is made up of many types with different pathophysiology requiring different treatments)
- Personalisation of treatment (many heart failure treatments don’t work or are not optimised for the specific patient leading to poor outcomes and increased costs)
Therefore, the main aims of this theme are:
- Support new tools and techniques stemming from imaging and computational cardiac modelling that address patient stratification, diagnosis and treatment in structural heart failure.
- Support image analysis and computational modelling tools that streamline analysis and provide added value to standard imaging of patients with heart failure.
- Disseminate results by having a strong presence at meetings of important stakeholders organized by the MedTech Co-operative.
- Deliver on collaborations with industrial partners/externally funded projects that will go on to have impact on patient care, utilising support from the MedTech Co-operative.