Despite medical advances, about 1.7 million people die of cardiovascular diseases in Europe every year – many of them could be prevented. With the EU Safe Hearts Plan, the European Commission has set the goal of reducing premature mortality from these diseases by 25 percent by 2035. In Germany, the National Heart Network (NHN) is intended to make an important contribution to this.

About 62 million people in the EU are living with a cardiovascular diagnosis. More than half of the global burden of disease is due to modifiable risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking. Studies show that consistent control of these risk factors is associated with significantly more healthy life years – in some constellations up to 15 additional years without cardiovascular disease or premature death.

The President of the German Society of Cardiology – Heart and Circulatory Research (DGK), Prof. Stefan Blankenberg, explained that the EU Safe Hearts Plan is a strong health policy signal. It is now crucial to translate the goals in the member states into concrete structures. For Germany, this requires a clear, data-based and cross-sectoral approach – this is exactly where the National Heart Network comes in.

The National Heart Network is intended to systematically bring together routine data from clinical practice for the first time, standardize it and make it usable in a quality-assured manner. The aim is to make care routes more transparent, to identify gaps in care and to bring evidence-based improvements into practice more quickly. At the same time, it addresses key elements of the EU Safe Hearts Plan, including better use of health data, the integration of digital solutions including artificial intelligence, and closing innovation gaps.

The development will initially take place in model regions, including Berlin, the Ruhr area as well as Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The nationwide roll-out is then planned.

Blankenberg emphasized that Germany has excellent cardiovascular medicine. However, there has been a lack of systematic linking of existing data and findings across sector boundaries. The National Heart Network is intended to close precisely this gap and become a central building block of modern, data-based cardiac medicine.

With the National Heart Network, the DGK is committed to effectively supporting the goals of the EU Safe Hearts Plan in Germany – through better use of data, more transparency in care and a structured flow of knowledge back into clinical practice.

Editor: X-Press Journalistenbüro GbR

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