Predicting Patient-level New Onset Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major cardiovascular health problem: it is common, chronic and incurs substantial health-care expenditure as a result of stroke, sudden death, heart failure and unplanned hospitalisation. There is a compelling argument for the early diagnosis of AF, before the first complication occurs, but population-based screening is not recommended. Strategies to identify individuals at higher risk of new onset AF are required. previous risk scores have been limited by data and methodology. The investigators will use routinely collected hospital-linked primary care data and focus on the use of artificial intelligence methods to develop and validate a model for the prediction of incident AF. Specifically, the investigators will investigate how population-based data may be used for precision medicine using a deep neural networks learning model. Using clinical factors readily accessible in primary care, the investigators will provide a method for the identification of individuals in the community who are at risk of AF, as well as when incident AF will occur in those at risk, thus accelerating research assessing technologies for the improvement of risk prediction, and the targeting of high-risk individuals for preventive measures and screening.