# ECG-AI Based Prediction and Phenotyping of Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction

> **NIH NIH R01** · WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2024 · $548,339

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
More than 6 million adults are suffering from heart failure in the United States. Heart failure is associated with
high mortality rate while also reducing the quality of life. Early recognition of heart failure and timely
interventions can help reducing the disease burden to individuals and to overall healthcare system. However,
more than half of HF patients are HF with preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (HFpEF) while the majority
of existing HF treatments are for HF with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (HFrEF). This is because
HFpEF is a heterogenous syndrome, and its etiology is not well understood. A new NIH-funded initiative,
HeartShare Study, aims to fill this knowledge gap to identify subtypes of HFpEF potentially with different
treatment options using deep phenotyping, multi-omics, and machine learning approach. However, there is still
a need for low cost and accessible tools 1) for screening large patient populations for HFpEF risk to support
preventive risk modification strategies and 2) for identifying HFpEF subtypes to assist targeted therapeutics.
The goal of this ancillary study is to utilize low cost and accessible electrocardiogram (ECG) data via artificial
intelligence (AI) for prediction of incident HFpEF risk and subtyping of prevalent HFpEF.
We and others have shown that AI applied to ECG data can discriminate patients with reduced and preserved
EF with high accuracy [1-5]. We recently developed and validated an ECG-based 10-year HF risk prediction
model using artificial intelligence (AI) [6, 7]. These findings led us to hypothesize that AI applied to ECG data
can predict HFpEF risk and identify specific HFpEF subtypes. The goal of this ancillary study is to test our
hypothesis by leveraging retrospective ECG and clinical data from: a) NIH-funded studies with gold standard
ascertainment of HFpEFand b) real-world ECG and clinical data from three large healthcare systems (WFU-
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC; UT-University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis,
TN; and LUC-Loyola University Chicago) and c) data from the HeartShare Study. Building on our expertise, we
propose developing ECG-based risk prediction and classification of HFpEF subtypes by completing three
Aims:
Aim 1. Develop an incident HFpEF prediction model using data from NIH-funded studies: We will utilize
high quality and accurate data from NIH-funded studies to develop AI model predicting risk for incident HFpEF.
Aim 2. Develop an incident HFpEF prediction model using real-world Electronic Health Records (EHR)-
derived data: We will first utilize very larger and diverse EHR-based real world data to develop incident
HFpEF risk prediction model. We will then harmonize it with the NIH-data based model via transfer learning.
Aim 3. Develop, test and implement ECG-based HFpEF phenotyping. This aim will utilize data from
prevalent HFpEF patients to classify HFpEF subtypes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10867405
- **Project number:** 5R01HL169451-02
- **Recipient organization:** WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Oguz Akbilgic
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $548,339
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-01 → 2027-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10867405

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10867405, ECG-AI Based Prediction and Phenotyping of Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (5R01HL169451-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10867405. Licensed CC0.

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