According to the Heart Failure Society of America, an estimated 6.7 million Americans have heart failure (HF), and those numbers are expected to increase to 8.7 million in 2030, 10.3 million in 2040, and 11.4 million in 2050. While there is a significant amount of information available to healthcare providers treating patients with this condition, there is no one central repository of information that is easily accessible for health care professionals.
The new NYP Advances app was launched to help make heart failure education more accessible to clinicians.
Recognizing the need for a comprehensive resource including clinical trial data, expert video series, and more, David Majure, M.D., MPH, medical director of the heart transplant service at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, and other members of NewYork-Presbyterian’s Heart Failure Program across both Columbia and Weill Cornell Medicine recently launched a new mobile app with the goal of making HF resources more accessible and understandable. Below, Dr. Majure discusses the evolution of the app, the main components it features, and how he thinks it will help advance the field.
App Development Background
Right around when the first iPhone came out, I was toying with various ideas for how to disseminate knowledge related to cardiology and heart failure in particular. I was just starting out in my specialty training and knew that I, as a new physician, would benefit from a single place where I could access information about ongoing clinical trials, educational resources, and important publications.
At that time, I developed a basic app that catalogued most of the key randomized trials that really influence the way we manage patients. I didn’t really market it – I just put it up in the app store and it wasn’t long after that I realized it was being used by thousands of people around the world. However, as I got busier in my career, it became difficult to keep it up. In addition to my clinical work, I was doing the programming for the app and maintaining it myself, and it ended up being too much.
However, the idea of an app that could serve as a comprehensive educational resource for providers never left my mind. When I joined the Heart Failure Program at NewYork-Presbyterian in 2020, I saw the depth and breadth of educational programming here and knew that I wanted to find a way to get it out to the larger medical community. That led to the evolution of this new app, NYP Advances.
A Commitment to Accessible Education
Of the many things we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing that emerged from the heart failure team here was a deep bench of virtual educational programming. Gabriel Sayer, M.D., associate director of advanced heart failure, cardiac transplantation, and mechanical circulatory support at NewYork-Presbyterian, is extremely passionate about making education more accessible to people and he helped lead the development of a Zoom series of CME content on pertinent topics that eventually led to a recurring series on HF and cardiology that is very popular. With all of these discussions recorded, we got the idea that we should put together an app to make this information more readily available to the public at-large.
There are a lot of different places where physicians, surgeons, trainees, and students can get their information from, but it’s not very well condensed in a way that’s manageable, especially the higher-level data that is important to have easy access to. That led us to want to develop an app that could fill this need and always be in the hands of physicians.
The app is one of the first mobile resources to bring together heart failure trials, education and clinical insights in one place.
Components of NYP Advances App
The NYP Advances app is much bigger and more comprehensive than the original one I built over 12 years ago. There are three main components, all of which are free:
- A catalog of the major randomized controlled trials in heart failure with expert commentary from specialists at NewYork-Presbyterian, spanning over 140 trials dating from the 1980s to present
- A video library of our live and recorded virtual CME series and presentations at conferences highlighting key areas in heart failure, new therapies, novel technologies, and gaps
- A journal watch where we aggregate and highlight all the research being conducted at NewYork-Presbyterian that is helping advance the field
Additionally, in the clinical trial catalog, we break down all the key elements of the trials and provide a very detailed expert review of why they are important and what else is needed in the field. We’ve also embedded filters so that it’s easier for users to quickly find the information they are seeking.
Future Plans
Our hope is that this will be widely utilized not only within the HF community but broadly to all health care professionals, from specialists to students. At NewYork-Presbyterian, we have the largest heart failure program in the country in terms of care of patient with advanced heart failure, transplant, left ventricular assist devices, and pulmonary hypertension. All of us are working together to make this app successful, both in terms of keeping the important trials on the app up-to-date and presenting videos addressing the current clinical issues that mean the most to practicing providers.
Our ultimate goal is to make the information that makes management of patients with HF successful more accessible to all practitioners in a condensed, easy-to-use format. And eventually in the future, potentially expand the app resources to other specialties and conditions. There are many places that offer information about heart failure, but none offer a review or lecture series of this quality for free and in a mobile-based application.
The app is currently available for Apple users on the iTunes store by searching “NYP Advances” and will be available for Android users on Google Play soon.
