Heart Failure: The Records and Readings Research Needs

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

Living with heart failure means living with numbers: a scan that measured how well the heart pumps, blood tests every few months, a weight that is checked every morning, medicines whose doses go up step by step. Each of those is a record, and together with how breathlessness, sleep and energy actually changed, they tell the story of a treatment. Research on heart failure needs that story told over time, and the person living it, or the person caring for them, holds most of it.

How many people live with it

A review in Cardiovascular Research estimated that heart failure affects more than 64 million people worldwide. How often it is newly diagnosed ranges widely from one to nine cases per 1,000 person-years in European countries and the US, depending on the population studied and how heart failure is defined.

The records worth keeping

NICE's guideline on chronic heart failure describes the tests and reviews that leave records:

• An NT-proBNP blood test when heart failure is suspected: NICE says to measure N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in people with suspected heart failure.
• An echocardiogram, a heart scan that assesses the systolic (and diastolic) function of the left ventricle. Its report gives the ejection fraction, one of the most important numbers in heart failure.
• Kidney function and electrolyte tests after each dose change of several medicines, and then every 3 to 6 months once the maximum tolerated dose has been established. A series of these shows how treatment was adjusted.
• A review in primary care: NICE asks practices to recall the person at least every 6 months and update the clinical record.

Daily weights, blood pressure readings from a home monitor or a smartwatch, and your own notes on breathlessness and swelling show what happens between those reviews. If you do not have your echo report or test results, ask your practice or heart failure team for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete heart failure story with a year of the records the guideline lists comes to about $98 per licence on the benchmark today. With 90 days of readings from a wearable or home monitor, it comes to about $208 per licence. Every line and its source is on the heart failure page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

For carers

Many people with heart failure are supported by a partner or an adult child who goes to appointments, keeps the medicine list and notices the changes first. You can share the story of someone you care for, as their legal representative or with their permission. The questions are then asked about them, and the record notes that a carer told it.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every medicine and treatment tried. You can add scan reports, blood tests, clinic letters and a page of daily weights as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.