India, Nov. 9 -- A new AI model can predict patients' risk of developing and worsening disease, and even their risk of early death, using an electrocardiogram (ECG).

Researchers at Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust believe their work, published today in Lancet Digital Health, could be used in the NHS within five years. It would enable doctors to find disease earlier and prioritise the most urgent cases for treatment.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) records the electrical activity of the heart and is one of the most common medical tests in the world.

The team used very large sets of data from international sources, consisting of millions of ECGs previously taken as part of routine care, to train their AI model...