Cardiology – What will be the Future Trends in Cardiology

1. Expanding catheter-based intercessions for all areas of the body. This will boost interventional radiology and cardiac cath lab capacities and lead to drops in open surgical methods. As coronary intrusions have plateaued, many of the innovations in the coming years will be for heart failure and structural heart interventions.

2. Closer alliance of computed tomography (CT) and echo imaging to implement better pre-procedural preparation and peri-procedural administration.

3. Analytics software, combined with artificial intelligence, will see fast uptake to look at big data across healthcare systems. This will facilitate new ways to manage healthcare, including the identification of bottlenecks and incompetence within units or processes. This can also help evaluate the readmission or infection risks a specific patient likely poses to help target restricted hospital resources.

4. We will see more comprehensive efforts and several new technologies to lessen radiation dose in both CT and cath lab angiography imaging methods. This includes increasing use of ultrasound and transesophageal echo (TEE) during procedures to cut or abolish the use of angiographic X-ray. There also will be increased use of 3-D navigation aids using 3-D echo, pre-procedural CT or rotational angiography imaging to reduce procedure times.

5. There will be a more prominent emphasis on reducing staff radiation dose and associated orthopedic problems due to carrying heavy lead aprons all day. This includes adopting new technologies in the lab to better protect staff, including real-time dose monitoring systems, use of new, very light-weight aprons, and probably robotics to remove the physician from the radiation field.

6. I predict a wide selection of virtual fractional flow reserve (FFR) technologies in the next decade if computer processing times can be reduced to minutes rather than hours. Current FFR coupled with noninvasive CT angiography (FFR-CT) and advancements like CT perfusion imaging will likely discharge the need for nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging.

7. Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) will likely replace the majority of open-heart surgical valve replacements in select patient populations. If clinical trial data continue the very positive trends for TAVR, it will earn more procedural volume than surgical valve replacements.

8. Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation will greatly improve from 60 per cent procedural success rates to 80-90 per cent in the coming years with the adoption of more accurate electro-anatomical mapping methods and improved ablation catheter technologies that reduce intra-operator variability.

9. EP implantable devices will become much smaller and wireless. This will enable catheter-based implant procedures, excluding the need for operational pockets and venous leads for pacemakers. These technologies also will lessen the number of leads required for ICDs.

10. All EP device followup and 24-7 monitoring will be conducted via the web through remote monitoring. Artificial intelligence will be used to help track patient data and identify patients who need office follow-up, device reprogramming and other issues requiring human interventions.

11. Simple, small wearable patient monitors will largely replace traditional Holter monitors. Consumer-grade patient monitors may offer new data to monitor patient health, including watching if a patient's health is declining or improving based on activity due to lifestyle changes, new drugs, etc. This data will need to be accessible for review and storage inpatient electronic medical records.

12. However, with the new wireless connectivity of wearables and implantable devices, new factor physicians may need to discuss with patients is cybersecurity risk.

13. There is a trend toward the "Uberization" of healthcare, where conventional office hours and care standards will rapidly evolve to better match the digital interface and delivery of service standards pioneered by Amazon, Uber and others. Like Amazon and Facebook, consumers today expect instant results and access to their patient data, images, labs, etc.

14. Across cardiac imaging, there will be greater use of 3-D advanced visualization. This involves fully automated reconstructions to improve efficiency and increase 3-D usage. This and other advanced visualization tools and image analysis will be instantly available at all staff workstations, not just dedicated computers. Some of this imaging capability will also be available for patients via their patient portals, and referring physicians via remote image viewing methods combined with the EMR, PACS and/or CVIS.

15. CVIS, PACS and all other clinical data arrangements will be upgraded to methods that easily interface into enterprise-wide EMR systems. Some will be based around the hospital system's EMR as the chief digital data access point. Others will be based around a vendor-neutral archive (VNA) that gives enterprise-wide access to the data using content management software to sort the data from all clinical systems and the EMR.

16. Healthcare reforms to convert the current fee-for-service model to a fee-for-value model will continue because the payment system is inefficient, costly and is not sustainable for Medicare. While the pace of these reforms is slowing because of Trump administration policies, there is still a requirement to contain costs over the long term. Among these reforms will be movements toward bundled payments and the enactment of clinical decision support (CDS) software to determine if an order is suitable for the specific patient.

More Information : https://tagenpharmaceuticals.com/