Computational Cardiology — A New Discipline of Translational Research

Over the past two decades, improved diagnosis, pharmaceutical therapies, and interventional strategies have impressively improved the armamentarium of modern cardiologists in the fight against the most incident and lethal diseases: heart failure, ischemic heart disease, and arrhythmia. The innovations in the field have mostly been enabled by inventions based on hypothesis-driven approaches. The invention and development of key cardiac biomarkers, such as natriuretic peptides and cardiac-specific troponins, may serve as examples. Based on few candidate molecules, the discovery of these markers requires neither high-throughput molecular screening, nor advanced computational methodologies for interpretation and refinement of results.