We congratulate Philip Hempel on successfully completing his doctorate

We warmly congratulate Philip Hempel on successfully completing his doctorate in the Cardiovascular Science doctoral program, which he graduated from on December 17, 2026, with summa cum laude honors.

His dissertation, entitled “Sending AI to med school: increasing the level of evidence in AI-ECG models for cardiovascular diseases,” deals with AI models based on electrocardiograms (AI-ECG) and how these can be made more methodologically robust, transparent, and clinically better classified.

The aim is to systematically increase the currently limited evidence base for such models and thus prepare for their application in cardiovascular medicine.

Methodologically, the dissertation combines end-to-end trained AI models with explainable AI approaches, established guideline-based ECG parameters, and external validation across several independent cohorts. The approach was investigated in three fields of application: the determination of an AI-based ECG heart age as a potential biomarker, the adaptation of 12-channel models to single-channel ECGs from wearables for arrhythmia detection, and longitudinal analyses for disease prediction.

The results show that the decision-making basis of the models corresponds to physiologically and clinically well-documented ECG characteristics and can be reproduced across different populations and healthcare systems. The work thus makes an important contribution to the evidence-based further development of AI ECG models and their potential use in the early detection and prevention of cardiovascular diseases.