Software system helps patients heal themselves

Heart patient John Arts will receive tailored information from the software system used by nurse specialist Andy McLachlan. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

For two years, Weymouth resident John Arts' heart has been beating unusually fast.

The 70-year-old has atrial fibrillation, which causes irregular heart beats. It often has no symptoms, but can cause palpitations, chest pain or even heart failure. Tomorrow Mr Arts will have surgery to make his heart beat regularly.

A new system being used at Middlemore Hospital predicted he had a 13 per cent risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next five years if he was not treated.

The system, Predict, lets clinicians accurately assess patients' risk of having an attack based on factors such as their blood pressure, weight and cholesterol level.

"If you had 100 people in a room with those exact same risk factors, it'd tell you how many of those 100 people will have a heart attack or stroke over the next five years," said Middlemore's clinical nurse specialist Andy McLachlan.

The hospital has already used the system for 2500 acute patients in cardiology, rheumatology and stroke services. By next month, it will be used to screen diabetes patients.

Mr McLachlan said the software system, which was successfully tested in mid-2004, would help hospital staff, particularly nurses, discuss patients' risks and identify what they could do themselves to minimise their risk of a heart attack.

Without the system, patients did not necessarily get this risk-reducing information before they left hospital, said Mr McLachlan.

The system leads to tailored guidelines, such as a weight-loss goal, for each patient. It calculated that Mr Arts needed to lose 10kgs, which he will be able to achieve when he returns to boating and walking - activities the atrial fibrillation has kept him from.

Mr McLachlan said patients such as Mr Arts also got a plain-English information sheet to take home.

"We recognise that if you've gone through the hospital and you've had a heart attack, you're actually very motivated to make that change."

The aim was for the information to be made easily accessible for GPs and primary healthcare organisations, said Mr McLachlan. Screening healthy people for their future risks would also help, he said. The expansion of the system into diabetes screening was one small step.

"The system is not going to solve all the lifestyle problems, but at least ... we know we now have a systematic approach to getting people information."