Experts discuss how AI will finally help close a critical gap in cardiac care
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AI can support more personalized risk assessment and help move us away from one-size-fits-all thresholds that were largely validated in male populations.
—Sam Setareh, MD
Looking at our evaluations of the last 10 years of cardiovascular research published in AHA journals, from about 2017 to 2022, we still see that women only constitute about 30% of research participants.
—Stacey Rosen, MD
At a scientific session during 2025's AHA conference, Stacey Rosen, MD—the new head of the AHA and a leader in women’s health—emphasized the importance of increased focus on women’s heart health.
For decades, Dr. Rosen said, research and clinical trials focused largely on male patients, leaving critical gaps in understanding how heart disease affects women differently in just about every way—symptoms, outcomes, and treatment responses. Even widely accepted practices, she said, like daily aspirin for prevention, were based on studies that didn’t include women.
The Physicians’ Health Study reported on preventive aspirin in 1989.[] “I was a pretty junior clinician then,” Dr. Rosen said. “We told [our female patients] there were no women in the study. And that just didn’t make sense to me.”[] But things haven’t gotten much better, she says. “Looking at our evaluations of the last 10 years of cardiovascular research published in AHA journals, from about 2017 to 2022, we still see that women only constitute about 30% of research participants.”
Tracy Paeschke, MD, a cardiologist specializing in preventive cardiology, knows this reality all too well. “Heart disease is the number one killer of women. It kills more women than all forms of cancer combined,” she tells MDLinx. “Despite this, women’s symptoms of heart disease are often minimized or overlooked.”
What can be done to bridge the gender gap?
Dr. Rosen argues that researchers and clinical practices need to recruit and retain female participants. Part of the solution, she says, could lie in leveraging AI.
Sam Setareh, MD, Director of Clinical Cardiology at Beverly Hills Cardiovascular, feels similarly. “Much of modern cardiovascular medicine was built on data derived primarily from men. That has shaped how we define symptoms, how we design diagnostic pathways, and how we assess risk.”
Cardiology is different for women, Dr. Setareh says—in ways that are both biological and clinical. “Women are more likely to present with nonclassic ischemic symptoms, have higher rates of microvascular disease, and experience conditions such as spontaneous coronary artery dissection that are less common in men.”
In fact, women are still less likely to be referred for advanced testing or to receive timely invasive evaluation, and they are more likely to have their symptoms dismissed as noncardiac, Dr. Setareh stresses.
AI's emerging role
Like Dr. Rosen, Dr. Setareh believes AI can play a pivotal role in bridging the gender gap in cardiology. “AI can analyze large, complex datasets to identify sex-specific patterns in imaging, ECGs, biomarkers, and outcomes that traditional models may miss. AI can support more personalized risk assessment and help move us away from one-size-fits-all thresholds that were largely validated in male populations,” he says.
One caveat? “AI is not a solution on its own. If algorithms are trained on biased or incomplete data, they will reproduce those same gaps at scale,” Dr. Setareh notes. “Focusing on women’s cardiovascular health is not about creating separate cardiology. It is about practicing better, more precise cardiology.”
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