Using Computers To Assess The Heart

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The Entelos model draws its predictive power by comparing my results with a population of thousands of simulated patients based on real patients from previous heart studies. This virtual-patient pool also includes data from actual human subjects being tested in clinical trials run by pharmaceutical companies testing new heart drugs.

The modelers look for a cluster of patients in their database that have profiles most closely resembling mine. They then create a "Virtual David" as they call it—a prediction of my heart attack future based on the outcomes of this cluster of real and imagined patients from their model.

One explanation for my unanticipated outcome is a specific gene marker that increases my odds for a heart attack. Another is a mechanism discovered by the model suggesting that my cholesterol level has an unusual linkage with my weight. Too many cheeseburgers and chips will drive my cholesterol up higher and faster than average, putting me on the dangerous "yellow line" future rather than the safer "green line."

Founded in 1996, Entelos is developing its personal heart attack augur (and others for diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and additional maladies) as an outgrowth of its major business to date: working with pharma companies to simulate how drug candidates might work in humans.

Called "in silico" (in computer) testing, these profiles from Entelos and other companies are becoming sophisticated enough that clients, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck paid $21.8 million to Entelos last year to model new drugs. One day modeling could reduce patient exposure to possible side effects, and save money and time on a process that takes up to 15 years and costs over $1 billion per successful drug.

The biotech investment and analysis firm Burrill & Co. has predicted that the majority of drug discovery will be done in silico by 2020.

Co-founder and chief technology officer Alex Bangs says that Entelos spent about $50,000 developing my "virtual heart attack" model—the first of its kind. I didn't pay anything; it offered to run the tests on me as a demonstration of its effort.

Once the program is finalized and scaled up, Entelos hopes to price its product between a few hundred dollars for minimal tests to perhaps $2,000 for a deluxe version. This may seem expensive for a still largely untested augur of one's future cardiac health, although it may not be too long before these predictive models become a more integral part of medicine and individual health.

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