Caption Health provided me with unpublished data from a study in which 8 nurses with no previous experience in cardiac ultrasound performed four different types of scans on 240 patients. For assessing patients’ left ventricular size and function, as well as assessment of pericardial effusion, or fluid around the heart, the AI took the same number of usable images. For each, 240 scans were performed, and 237, or 98.8%, were of sufficient quality, according to a panel of five cardiologists. For images of the right ventricle, which is harder to see, the results were a bit worse: 222 images, or 92.5% of them, were of adequate quality. Eric Topol, the director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, commented that this was still a small number of samples for AI work; Caption Health said it “respectfully disagrees” because the study was prospective. The goal of the study was to show the test was 80% accurate. - www.statnews.com