Building cardiology care for the future
Norway Life Science is the leading conference for life sciences in Norway. We connect leading researchers with industrial innovators, visionary leaders and strategic minds. We want to showcase excellent research and inspire to the development of new ideas. With ground-breaking technology and collaboration, we aim to stimulate to the emergence of a new Norwegian health industry, and support Nordic solutions to global challenges. Seven years after it was established, the University of Oslo relaunches the conference as an Oslo Science City Arena event together with our partners.
Life Science and Technology Transforming our Future
Can new collaborative models contribute to finding good and cost-effective solutions to health problems?
During this year's Norway Life Science conference Center director Kristina Haugaa, together with Chair of the Center Board Prof. Eigil Samset, presented their experiences from years of successful collaboration between academia and industry.
During these past decades GE HealthCare has utilized user feedback to improve their ultrasound products through testing and research in collaboration with University Hospitals. Advance usage and scientific publications have allowed for the incorporation of new and improved features enabling better patient care. Requirement specifications and the importance of validation ensure quality products that ultimately lead to improved life quality for patients due to early detection and accurate diagnostics.
One of the benefits with technological development is decision support and patience guidance in real-time. Data from ICD's (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) may guide clinicians to adjust medication for their patients, allowing for personalized care in a heartbeat.
At GE HealthCare, Eigil Samset is responsible for technology development, artificial intelligence and digital transformation for the cardiology care area across all product lines. He has been with GE Healthcare for 10 years, driving strategic direction for AI in cardiovascular ultrasound and building strong partnerships both clinically, technologically and commercially.
During their presentation four main focus areas were highlighted;
Care pathway optimization
- Fully integrated solutions for diagnosis and treatment informed by data and AI
Clinical decision support
- Actionable patient-centric insights supported by AI
Virtual health
- Near real-time cardiac patient monitoring data
Empower heart care teams
- Cath-lab innovation through multi-modality integration
From left; Andreas Østvik, Kristina Haugaa and Bjørnar Grenne. (private photo)
In addition to Haugaa and Samset, Bjørnar Grenne, Consultant Cardiologist and Researcher at NTNU/St. Olavs Hospital, together with Andreas Østvik, Research Scientist at SINTEF, talked about the importance of artificial intelligence in heart ultrasound for improved patient care.
Both Grenne and Østvik are members of the Centre for Innovative Ultrasound Solutions (CIUS), a research-based innovation center (SFI) hosted by NTNU.
Ultrasound research has a long tradition at NTNU, and the SFI CIUS continues the work started in the early 1970s within ultrasound technology development and implementation in clinical practice. Indeed, the Norwegian medical ultrasound company Vingmed AS emerged from this research in 1977.
Østvik's research is focused on how to utilise and further develop machine learning methods to improve state-of-the-art solutions in the field of ultrasound image analysis and visualisation. More specifically, research will be conducted on tasks such as classification of standard plane views in echocardiography, cardiac landmark detection, and heart chamber segmentation in ultrasound images.
Grenne has broad experience in clinical echocardiography, including evaluation of complex valvular disase, endocarditis and ischemic heart disease, and with imaging modalities such as stress echocardiography, 3D echo, intra-operative and per-procedure echocardiography.
All partners and members bring valuable expertice to the industry-academia collaboration that is ProCardio.
