Prospects for artificial intelligence-enhanced electrocardiogram as a unified screening tool for cardiac and non-cardiac conditions: an explorative study in emergency care

Abstract

Abstract Aims Current deep learning algorithms for automatic ECG analysis have shown notable accuracy but are typically narrowly focused on singular diagnostic conditions. This exploratory study aims to investigate the capability of a single deep learning model to predict a diverse range of both cardiac and non-cardiac discharge diagnoses based on a single ECG collected in the emergency department. Methods and results In this study, we assess the performance of a model trained to predict a broad spectrum of diagnoses. We find that the model can reliably predict 253 ICD codes (81 cardiac and 172 non-cardiac) in the sense of exceeding an AUROC score of 0.8 in a statistically significant manner. Conclusion The model demonstrates proficiency in handling a wide array of cardiac and non-cardiac diagnostic scenarios, indicating its potential as a comprehensive screening tool for diverse medical encounters.