# Applying Digital Health to the AF Ablation NCDR, Enabling Longitudinal Follow-up

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2021 · $550,909

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Atrial fibrillation ablation is the most common procedure performed in electrophysiology laboratories and
continues to grow more rapidly than any other EP procedure. A recent NHLBI report highlighted the research
needs and priorities for catheter ablation of AF, emphasizing the importance of real-world evidence and the
lack of longitudinal, multi-center, data collection platforms to inform patients and healthcare providers. The
current proposal seeks to merge two extant resources to help fulfill those needs: the AF Ablation National
Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) and the NIH-supported Eureka mobile health research platform. The AF
Ablation NCDR is a well-established quality assessment tool currently already in operation in 200 institutions
around the US, utilizing comprehensive and carefully vetted and regularly audited data collection forms to
ascertain detailed information regarding patient, procedure, and institution-level information. However, the AF
Ablation NCDR does not capture longitudinal information regarding procedural effectiveness, safety, or patient
reported outcomes. Eureka, co-developed and run by the proposed PI of the current project, is a digital
infrastructure built to facilitate mobile health-based research, providing established workflows to obtain remote
consent, actively engage with and collect information directly from research participants via a mobile app,
employ technical integrations to passively collect data from smartphones, and utilizes a reliable and secure
backend database to curate and transmit the resultant data. We propose to co-enroll AF Ablation NCDR
patients into a customized Eureka tenant, enabling longitudinal data collection in a pragmatic fashion. While
the overarching goal of this project will be to leverage these efforts to efficiently construct a resource available
for multiple secondary analyses, ancillary projects, and future projects for interested investigators, we will
demonstrate the utility of the merged infrastructure to pursue three immediately clinically relevant Aims.
 In Aim 1, we will determine the relative influences of patient-level, procedural-level, and institution-level
characteristics as predictors of AF Ablation effectiveness and risk in this multi-center, real-world, prospective
cohort, specifically testing the hypotheses that female sex, cryoablation (rather than radiofrequency ablation),
and procedures performed in non-teaching hospitals will each be associated with reduced effectiveness and
more frequent complication. In Aim 2, we will seek to determine how lifestyle factors may influence AF Ablation
outcomes, specifically testing the hypothesis that reduced alcohol consumption after ablation is associated with
greater effectiveness. In Aim 3, we will seek to demonstrate how this large multi-center database may be
useful in characterizing rare but especially clinically relevant complications, specifically to describe the
incidence and predictors o...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10278345
- **Project number:** 1R01HL158825-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** GREGORY M MARCUS
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $550,909
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-16 → 2026-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10278345

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10278345, Applying Digital Health to the AF Ablation NCDR, Enabling Longitudinal Follow-up (1R01HL158825-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10278345. Licensed CC0.

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