If it’s not an obvious STEMI, the most serious type of myocardial infarction, a heart attack can skirt an immediate diagnosis, making it even more dangerous. That, says Christian Martin-Gill, can delay proper treatment or cause unnecessary testing and treatment.

Martin-Gill (Res ’08, Fel ’10), an MD, MPH associate professor of emergency medicine and EMS division chief at the University of Pittsburgh, works with other Pitt Med researchers who want to give emergency responders and emergency room physicians a better way to diagnose cardiac events and plan their response to other instances of distress. Those researchers include Salah Al-Zaiti, a PhD assistant professor of emergency medicine and School of Nursing professor, and Clifton Callaway (Res ‘96), MD, PhD Distinguished Professor and Ronald D. Stewart Professor of Emergency Medicine Research, as well as executive vice chair of emergency medicine. They took EKG results from a few thousand patients at UPMC hospitals and another health system and created an algorithm that reveals the type of cardiac problem that normally might take upward of a day to diagnose.

“We gave a machine an algorithm of almost 700 different features to identify patterns, and the model we derived can detect heart attacks better than the clinic interpretation or existing algorithms,” Martin-Gill says. In real time, the AI system would read EKG results from a patient complaining of chest pain and translate those to determine whether or not the patient is having a heart attack.

The team is now building hardware for use in the field that can send the results to hospital-based emergency physicians, an effort supported by the National Institutes of Health over the next four years.

Martin-Gill is involved in another effort likely to save lives far beyond Pittsburgh for years to come.

In 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a report highlighting that 20 percent of the nearly 200,000 trauma deaths each year in the United States could be prevented. That report has served as a driving force to create national guidelines for trauma care.

Martin-Gill, through his involvement with the National Association of EMS Physicians and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, leads efforts to create and promote standard guidelines for care in the prehospital realm, specifically evidence-based procedures for emergency personnel. At this point, protocols are likely to differ from state to state, and even county to county.

The focus in coming years, Martin-Gill says, is to “better translate science into recommendations and those into guidelines that we can disseminate widely.”

Martin-Gill has been widely recognized for his efforts. In 2018, he received the Barbara A. Hess Research and Education Award from the Association of Air Medical Services, which recognizes those who contribute to the enhancement, development and promotion of emergency medicine research and education. His colleagues speak highly of his knowledge and contributions. Says Ankur Doshi (MD ’00, Res ’03), a Pitt associate professor of emergency medicine, “Chris is outstanding at many things. What stands out to me is his ability to build bridges between the many EMS services in our area and our health system for patient care and data, all of which leads to better patient outcomes.” 

Read more from the Winter 2024 issue.