Heart Rhythm Ireland turns to IBM to help automate and accelerate its cardiac implant monitoring platform for hospitals and their patients across Ireland

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Little did Heart Rhythm Ireland (HRI) CEO Robert Kelly know but a chance meeting would significantly alter the trajectory of the cloud-based cardiac device management firm and, in collaboration with IBM, open a new world of possibilities for its future growth. Gavin Shorten, IBM Ireland Labs explains how, eight months on, the collaboration is going from strength to strength with exciting new plans on the horizon.

In the event of a person having a cardiac device implanted (for example a pacemaker) it must be monitored. Enter HRI, who provide a cloud-based cardiac rhythm management platform to monitor the implantable device. Established over 15 years ago by Louth native Robert Kelly, HRI is a pioneer in the health tech and cardiac device management space.

The HRI platform supports approximately 50 hospitals across Ireland and is used to monitor devices for 65,000 patients. The organisation has issued over 100,000 cardiac device ID cards, each containing crucial information about the implantable cardiac device and the personal details of the recipient. Additionally, HRI functions as the National Registry for Cardiac Implantable Devices in Ireland.

According to Kelly’s own estimates, HRI has one of the biggest data sets of cardiac device data, across all manufacturers globally and allied with its strong local market position the company was in a good place. But the team at HRI had ambitions to go further. However, it faced some challenges, first and foremost in the context of its technology, which was static,  and lacked the necessary intuition, automation and integration to bring HRI to the next level in terms of its service offering. In short, it needed a rebuild, from the ground up.

HRI serves a diverse set of stakeholders, from cardiac consultants and physiologists to patients, each presenting specific requirements that needed to be addressed. The large volume of data and the considerable time required for clinicians to write reports and provide feedback on implant procedures and device follow-ups were notably time-consuming. For patients, access to easily digestible information about their devices, especially while traveling, was crucial. Foremost, providing patients with the security and peace of mind was a primary concern.

In terms of roll-out, HRI also needed to install hardware in each hospital to facilitate integration with the cardiac device manufacturers’ programmers. Given the large volume of sensitive data, hospitals were initially reluctant to adopt this infrastructure.

For HRI, scaling the technology, ensuring a best-in-class approach, adhering to healthcare regulatory compliance and providing the highest quality of security were mission critical.

IBM recognised the value of HRI, what it provided clinicians and patients and the exciting potential of the company. From an IBM perspective, we were ideally placed, with our co-creation credentials, programme build and development capabilities, and security expertise to collaborate with HRI. IBM has worked with HRI as an IBM Ecosystem Business Partner to integrate IBM Cloud CodeEngine, IBM Cloud Secrets Manager and other technologies that rapidly accelerate HRI’s ability to build and deploy its applications to hospitals.

Since joining IBM Partner Plus and working together over the past eight months, the changes to the HRI platform have been significant. Leveraging the scalability, security and platform monitoring capabilities from IBM Cloud services, HRI can now enable clinicians to access and review data from their patients’ devices more efficiently. For example, by providing automated secure data management, manual steps have been removed from the process allowing clinicians to finalise their reporting after consultations up to 75% faster than before. In terms of return on investment for HRI’s clients, this is significant when one considers the number of patients (65,000) who have an implantable cardiac device monitored by the HRI platform.

The collaboration with IBM and with RedHat, with its Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Edge technology and security expertise has also benefitted HRI significantly in the context of addressing IT security concerns on the part of hospitals with regards to facilitating a connection between the necessary technologies.

The cloud-based platform used by HRI is now in a position where it is equipped to scale globally. From a clinical point of view, Kelly asserts that HRI has the best cardiac rhythm management platform globally with huge potential for even more innovation.

While the focus, for now, is on expanding its offering across Europe and further afield to Australia, HRI is also keen to incorporate even more innovation. HRI is considering how to utilize the IBM watsonx AI and data platform to help HRI address clinicians and patient needs. In the case of patients, HRI is keen to explore the power of IBM’s AI capabilities to create a virtual assistant to answer queries related to their device, which could potentially help improve customer service and provide peace of mind.

The development of a virtual cardiac device ID, provided through a mobile application is in the mix, while exciting conversations are ongoing around using AI across the info rich data to deliver predictive analytics to clinicians.

There is no limit to what can be achieved, and to what the power of partnership can do.