Guest Editorial Cardiovascular Health Informatics: Risk Screening and Intervention

Abstract

Despite enormous efforts to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the past, it remains the leading cause of death in most countries worldwide. Around two-thirds of these deaths are due to acute events, which frequently occur suddenly and are often fatal before medical care can be given. New strategies for screening and early intervening CVD, in addition to the conventional methods, are therefore needed in order to provide personalized and pervasive healthcare. In this special issue, selected emerging technologies in health informatics for screening and intervening CVDs are reported. These papers include reviews or original contributions on 1) new potential genetic biomarkers for screening CVD outcomes and high-throughput techniques for mining genomic data; 2) new imaging techniques for obtaining faster and higher resolution images of cardiovascular imaging biomarkers such as the cardiac chambers and atherosclerotic plaques in coronary arteries, as well as possible automatic segmentation, identification, or fusion algorithms; 3) new physiological biomarkers and novel wearable and home healthcare technologies for monitoring them in daily lives; 4) new personalized prediction models of plaque formation and progression or CVD outcomes; and 5) quantifiable indices and wearable systems to measure them for early intervention of CVD through lifestyle changes. It is hoped that the proposed technologies and systems covered in this special issue can result in improved CVD management and treatment at the point of need, offering a better quality of life to the patient.

The Veterans Affairs Cardiac Risk Score

“…Further, advances in wearable technology, genetics and electronic health records could soon provide dramatic advances in risk prediction unavailable in existing cohorts. 24,25 …”

Computational Cardiology

“…Health informatics, the processing, storage, and retrieval of health data has changed the detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases [89]. Like many explosive fields though success has bred challenges, especially in cardiovascular informatics [89].…”

“…Health informatics, the processing, storage, and retrieval of health data has changed the detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases [89]. Like many explosive fields though success has bred challenges, especially in cardiovascular informatics [89]. The plethora of computer-aided and computational methods developed over the last two decade have increased significantly the amount of data produced and stored within hospital databases and research institutes [90] and yet not access to these images or signals.…”

Single-pill combinations: a therapeutic option or necessity for vascular risk treatment?

“…Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents the main cause of death worldwide and thus research still focuses on potential genetic and physiological biomarkers, imaging techniques, healthcare technologies and indices for both CVD prevention and treatment as well as personalized prediction models5. There are several CVD risk factors, including hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus (DM), smoking and obesity, as well as platelet dysfunction.…”