K Health, Mayo Clinic collaborate on algorithm for individualized hypertension treatment

Hypertension is one of the most common chronic conditions in the U.S., affecting nearly half of the country’s adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unfortunately, standard hypertension treatment usually involves the testing of several different medications and lifestyle adjustments until a patient can see their blood pressure improve.

Digital primary care company K Health teamed up with Mayo Clinic to address this problem. On Thursday, the New York-based startup announced it has built an algorithm that helps physicians deliver personalized hypertension treatment using medical data and real-time insights from Mayo Clinic Platform_Discover, a collection of de-identified datasets from 10 million patients. The datasets include nearly 1.2 billion lab test results, 3 million echocardiograms, and more than 640 million clinical notes.

K Health was founded in 2016 as a digital platform using AI to help people understand how those with similar symptoms and conditions were diagnosed and treated. The company also seeks to increase Americans’ access to primary care by offering telehealth appointments for urgent and chronic care conditions, as well as providing an option for patients without insurance to chat with a clinician for less than a copay.

Its name comes from the silent letter in “knowledge,” because K Health seeks to “bring health knowledge to everyone, everywhere,” said Ran Shaul, the company’s co-founder and chief product officer.

When K Health built its hypertension treatment tool, it used data points such as demographics, medical history, lab results, prescriptions and outcomes to train and refine its algorithm. The tool aims to give clinicians a more targeted, personalized approach when treating hypertension.

The algorithm is meant to treat patients who are newly diagnosed with hypertension, as well as those who are having trouble finding an effective treatment for their hypertension. The tool predicts the medications and lifestyle changes that will best serve each particular patient.

Original Article: (https://medcitynews.com/2022/06/k-health-mayo-clinic-collaborate-on-algorithm-for-individualized-hypertension-treatment/)