Your feet might be hiding a medical emergency

AI HEALTH

Your feet might be hiding a medical emergency

A new bedside AI foot scanner could help people with heart failure stay out of hospital, according to researchers.

Built by Cambridge start-up Heartfelt Technologies, the device uses facial recognition-style tech to take 1,800 photos a minute of a patient’s lower legs.

It spots signs of fluid build-up—one of the main warning signs that heart failure is getting worse.

The scanner, which is about the size of a smart speaker, doesn’t need Wi-Fi and works automatically without any effort from the patient.

If it detects a problem, it sends an alert to healthcare teams, giving them time to adjust treatment well before symptoms become serious.

In a small NHS-backed study, the device picked up seven cases of worsening heart failure across 26 patients, on average 13 days before they would’ve ended up in hospital.

That’s far more lead time than patients got with Bluetooth scales, which often went unused.

Here’s what's happening:

• The scanner flagged issues over a week before hospital admissions.

• It works in the background; no action is needed from patients.

• Traditional weight tracking didn’t catch any of the hospital cases.

Feet don’t lie

Doctors say it could act like a “virtual nurse” at a time when there aren’t enough nurses specialising in heart failure to go around.

The British Heart Foundation also called the results promising, showing how simple tech might make early treatment easier for people managing long-term conditions.

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