OpenEP|NET
Research type
Research Study
Full title
OpenEP|NET
IRAS ID
318850
Contact name
Steven E Williams
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Edinburgh
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
NA, NA
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Cardiac arrhythmias (variations in the heartbeat) occur in about one-in-four people. They can impact broadly on quality of life and dramatically increase health risks. The most frequent arrhythmia is atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation increases risks of health failure nearly five-fold, chronic kidney disease by 64%, coronary heart disease by 61% and stroke 2.3-fold. Women have worse outcomes overall than men. Ventricular arrhythmias are the leading cause of sudden cardiac death, responsible for 6-million annual fatalities.
Arrhythmias are often treated by procedures called Ablation or Device Implantation. Ablation is a specialised process where small patches of tissue are destroyed under anaesthetic. Devices used for treating arrhythmias include pacemakers (which keep the heart going at the right speed) and defibrillators (which reset the heartbeat if it goes wrong). Ablation is an intricate and costly procedure which only provides an effective long-term solution in 50-80% of patients, and we still don't fully understand its benefits.
During these treatments doctors collect an enormous amount of data. This includes details on the heart's structure and its electrical activity triggering and regulating the heartbeat. This data is stored in various stand-alone formats which makes it difficult to compare and analyse on a large scale. As a result, big data research has not progressed in this field compared to other fields. To solve this problem our team developed a software tool named OpenEP. This software can dramatically reduce the size of the collected heart data which makes it far simpler to analyse.
In this programme of research, we will use OpenEP, along with other tools, to make arrhythmia data accessible to researchers. To ensure broad applications, we will link routinely collected data to important clinical outcomes, such as heart attacks, strokes, or hospital admissions, and patient reported outcomes such as symptoms providing an end-to-end trace from data to outcomes.
REC name
Wales REC 2
REC reference
25/WA/0276
Date of REC Opinion
15 Sep 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion