Doctors Thought It Was Asthma. A.I. Flagged a Serious Heart Problem.

Key Points:

• Louie Quiros, a 45-year-old caregiver, sought emergency care in Queens after coughing up blood and difficulty breathing, but initial tests failed to diagnose his severe heart condition.
• An AI program called EchoNext, developed by NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University researchers, analyzed his ECG and detected signs of severe heart damage missed by human doctors.
• EchoNext identified that Quiros’s heart was pumping only 10 percent of its blood per beat and that his mitral valve was leaking, leading to a critical diagnosis confirmed by a follow-up echocardiogram.
• The AI system is part of a clinical trial analyzing nearly 500,000 ECGs annually to identify heart damage patterns undetectable by traditional methods, potentially improving patient outcomes.
• EchoNext’s success in Quiros’s case highlights the growing role of AI in medical diagnostics and the commercialization efforts led by its creator, Dr. Pierre Elias.