According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of deaths related to cardiovascular disease rose by almost 25,000 between 2012 and 2014. While heart disease remains the leading cause of death throughout the world, the American healthcare system has particularly abysmal records. Despite spending more than any other developed nation on cardiovascular disease, the U.S. ranks the worst in performance and patient outcomes.
Heart disease is the cause of a third of the deaths in the States, and 1 in every 6 healthcare dollars are spent on cardiovascular disease. By 2035, it is predicted that the total cost of CVD to the American healthcare system will be more than one trillion dollars, nearly double the costs in 2016. Former American Heart Association President Steven Houser even warned that “cardiovascular disease is on a course that could bankrupt our nation’s economy and health care system.”
What’s to blame for this growing and costly epidemic? And more importantly, what can be done about it?
Many Factors Influence the U.S. Heart Disease Epidemic
Like most widespread medical concerns, there is no single root cause of the cardiovascular epidemic in America. But the more we can isolate individual factors, the better we can develop a multi-faceted solution.
Here are some of the biggest challenges that our health care system needs to overcome if we are going to tackle the epidemic as a whole:
- Nurse practitioners, physician assistants, primary care physicians, and other non-cardiologists are increasingly being called on to treat heart disease.
- More and more patients are going to urgent care clinics rather than their PCP.
- Rural America lacks sufficient CV specialists to meet demand.
- Delivery of CV healthcare lacks standardization throughout the U.S.
Medical Software Promises a Solution
When PCPs, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants are forced to make clinical decisions that are traditionally meant for cardiologists, bad things are going to happen. That is precisely why the U.S. heart disease epidemic is on the rise. And since it’s impossible to have enough cardiologists to meet the growing demand of U.S. patients, technology may provide the solution America needs.
Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest integrated managed care consortium in the country, argues that no “physician today should be practicing without artificial intelligence assisting in their practice. It’s just impossible (otherwise) to pick up on patterns, to pick up on trends, to really monitor care.”
Tyson’s words are ushering in a digital revolution in the world of health care, a revolution that CVD Evaluator aims to lead the charge in when it comes to combating the heart disease epidemic.
CVD Evaluator is a medical software application meant to bridge the knowledge gap between the ever growing complexity of cardiovascular treatment and the care providers who don’t have the expertise to make the right decisions. This cloud-based web and smartphone app is powered by artificial intelligence in order to guide practitioners towards evidence-based clinical decisions that have been proven to increase patient outcomes.
By drawing on the latest medical literature and machine learning technology, CVD Evaluator offers a means for standardizing the management of chronic heart disease despite the vast disparity in expertise throughout the nation. It levels the playing field for rural America and other underserved populations. Most of all, it offers an affordable, realistic way to fight back against the leading cause of death in the nation.
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