Identifying Patients for Cardiovascular Evaluation Using Artificial Intelligence and Team-Based Care in Ghana: The HeartLINK Triage for Risk-Informed Allocation and Guided Evaluation (H-TRIAGE) Study
Authors' conclusion
H-TRIAGE accurately identified adults needing cardiologist-adjudicated evaluation, and sensitivity remained high at a geographically distinct site. Applied by frontline nurses and community health workers, it could focus scarce specialist and diagnostic capacity on the patients most likely to need it, deferring roughly half of those assessed.
Study context
- Population
- Adults assessed by trained frontline nurses and community health workers at health facilities in Ghana (February-July 2026)participants (primary cohort and external validation), 1,707 (44.9%) had an adjudicated indication · primary 3,123 · external validation 677
- Participants
- 3,800 adults
- Index test or model
- H-TRIAGE index (Intermediate- and High-Risk prioritized) vs reference standard of adjudicated indication by blinded cardiologists
- Target condition
- adjudicated indication (a recommendation for further diagnostic testing, cardiologist-led evaluation, or both)
Methodological detailsconsecutively enrolled, cardiologists blinded to H-TRIAGE, external validation at a held-out facility in a separate district, modeled allocation analysis
- Consecutively enrolled
- Cardiologists blinded to H-TRIAGE
- External validation at a held-out facility in a separate district
- Modeled allocation analysis
Performance
As reported in the abstract
- True positives
- 1,656
- False positives
- 142
- True negatives
- 1,951
- False negatives
- 51
- Sensitivity
- 97.0% (95% CI, 96.1%-97.8%)
- Specificity
- 93.2% (92.1%-94.3%)
- PPV
- 92.1% (90.8%-93.3%)
- NPV
- 97.5% (96.7%-98.1%)
Further findings
Proportion with an indication by H-TRIAGE category
- Low
- 2.5%
- Intermediate
- 87.9%
- High
- 100%
- P for trend<0.001
Share of participants prioritized for evaluation
- Participants prioritized for evaluation
- 47.3%
Original publication
Identifying Patients for Cardiovascular Evaluation Using Artificial Intelligence and Team-Based Care in Ghana: The H-TRIAGE Study. Circ Popul Health Outcomes. Published 6 November 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →