A cutting-edge ‘virtual heart’ software tool is set to be introduced in Australia for the first time to help people living with a common heart rhythm disorder, atrial fibrillation (AF).
AF affects over 500,000 Australians, but existing one-size-fits-all treatments are ineffective for more than 50% of these patients.
A lack of understanding of how to tailor AF treatments has meant patients are often trialling multiple medications or undergoing repeated invasive procedures, which can lead to worsening of AF, infections, heart damage and even heart attacks.
Thanks to your donations, Dr Dhani Dharmaprani from the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), University of Adelaide, and Flinders University is working to develop more personalised treatments through exciting new digital technologies.
“While overseas, the concept of a ‘virtual heart’ or cardiac digital twin has been emerging, our research is focused on establishing the technical practices to bring this pioneering capability to Australia, which allows us to digitally simulate an individual’s heart behaviour,” Dr Dharmaprani said.
“This has been used to stop faulty electrical pathways, optimise cardiac resynchronisation therapy (treatment to help a heartbeat with the right rhythm), and predict AF recurrence. To advance this, we are further integrating clinical insights and
algorithms from our multi-centre clinical study to hopefully make these virtual hearts more realistic and clinically useful.”
Dr Dharmaprani and her team are establishing this technology in Australia alongside a collaborative multidisciplinary team consisting of experts in AF, engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, and cardiac electrophysiology (the
study of heart rhythm disorders).
These teams are from renowned institutions including the AIML, Imperial College London, Alan Turing Institute and Queen Mary University of London, with support from Flinders Medical Centre.
Dr Dharmaprani is also working to create more effective personalised models of a patient’s heart to simulate treatment scenarios and predict their outcomes more accurately, to reduce the trialand-error nature of current AF treatments.
“This could help in offering clinicians individualised treatments for patients based on readily available routine clinical data, including personalised predictions for interventions such as antiarrhythmic drugs, which could help improve patient outcomes and enhance scientific understanding of AF,” she said.
Australian Heart Research (AHR) is proud to be supporting Dr Dharmaprani’s groundbreaking research, made possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters.
“I am extremely grateful for Australian Heart Research’s support on my work and its potential impact. We hope this research significantly improves AF patient outcomes for all Australians.”
AHR’s support of Dr Dharmaprani’s work has garnered much recognition, leading to invitations to present at prestigious forums such as the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge and awards like the 7News Young Achiever in STEM 2024.
