SingHealth has developed a software to assess the risk of heart attacks for its patients. PRIYA SURI reports
Doctors at the nine SingHealth Polyclinics around the island now have a support tool to help persuade patients to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
The Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Risk Calculator is a software program that measures how likely a patient will suffer from a major heart attack in the next 10 years.
From the computer monitor, patients can see their level of risk indicated by different colour bands: red for the “high” range, orange for the “medium” range and green for the “low” range.
The software aids doctors when they are counselling their patients about their health risks.
Dr Hwang Siew Wai, deputy director of Pasir Ris SingHealth Polyclinic, said: “It’s a very visual tool. If my patient is a smoker and he’s in the red zone, I can actually show him how dramatically his risk can fall if he quits smoking - he can move to the medium or orange range, which can inspire him to quit.”
Using the tool does not add to the overall waiting time as readings such as blood pressure and heart rate are taken while patients wait for their turn to see the doctor.
The CVD Risk Calculator pulls information from the patient’s medical records and couples it with other details such as demographics and family history to compute the patient’s risk levels.
Those in the “high” range have an over 20 per cent chance of getting a heart attack in 10 years compared to 10 to 20 per cent for those in the “medium” range and less than 10 per cent for those in the “low” range.
While the formula for calculating a patient’s risk of heart attack is not unique to SingHealth, the network of public health institutions developed the software to compute the data digitally.
The CVD Risk Calculator can also assist doctors in customising treatment for each patient, which can include proper diet, regular exercise and medication.
The tool will be used to assess the risk of chronic patients with a history of stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol as they are most at risk of a heart attack.
psuri@sph.com.sg