IBM partners with the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet) to provide an important tool for the digital age: data analytics. The partnership launches Heart-SIGN (System for Information Gathering and Networking), a cloud-based analytics platform designed to “manage, monitor, store, correlate, and analyze” data generated by all CANet research projects. CANet makes use of IBM BigInsights on Cloud and Watson Analytics to build the platform meant to inspire new ideas and share research related to heart rhythm disturbances. Heart-SIGN will serve as a data resource for research and clinical practice on arrhythmia. It can also help researchers identify specific needs of patients, track them through the system, and measure outcomes.
The platform is also designed to provide evidence-based recommended starting points to answer questions that might have taken researchers years to investigate. These are all put in a single, dynamic interface to help “achieve faster and more cohesive clinical outcomes.” Millions of people in Canada experience irregular heart rhythms or arrhythmias, with some experiencing sudden cardiac death and others getting disorders like atrial fibrillation and syncope.