Recently, the Canadian Medical Association published the results of extensive research into the risk of heart disease: an online tool that can help you predict your 5 year risk of heart disease.

Researchers mined over 100,000 Canadian residents for demographic information such as age, smoking status, alcohol consumption, and diet. The result: the Cardiovascular Disease Population Risk Tool, or CVD-PoRT.

CVD-PoRT is intended to help direct preventative care, helping providers take a more holistic approach to counseling patients. This can include discussing possible healthy lifestyle changes that can reduce the chances of heart attack or stroke.

The insight gained from such large scale data analysis is and should in the future be used to improve other areas of medicine, including the diagnosis of serious diseases in the ER, the interpretation of radiology films, and eliminating infectious diseases in hospitals.

Perhaps the closer we make medicine to a science than an art, the safer we all will be.

You can read more about this at the Canadian Medical Association website here:

[Development and validation of a cardiovascular disease risk-prediction model using population health surveys: the Cardiovascular Disease Population Risk Tool (CVDPoRT)](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/190/29/E871)