Professor Gregory Lip and Professor Deirdre Lane from the University of Liverpool, together with Professor Davide Liborio Vetrano from Karolinska Institutet represented AFFIRMO at ESC Congress 2026, held in Munich from 28 to 31 August 2026. The annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology brought together cardiovascular professionals from around the world to discuss the latest developments in research and clinical practice. Within this setting, AFFIRMO contributed to the discussion on how to improve care for older patients living with atrial fibrillation and multiple chronic conditions.

The AFFIRMO trial results

On Sunday 30 August, Professor Lip presented the main results of the AFFIRMO cluster-randomised trial during the Hot Line session “Answers in AF” one of the late-breaking science sessions of the congress.

The trial tested the iABC system, a mobile health intervention combining the Atrial Fibrillation Better Care (ABC) pathway with comprehensive geriatric assessment against usual care in older patients with atrial fibrillation and multimorbidity enrolled across six European countries. The intervention did not reduce unplanned hospitalisations compared with usual care. As Professor Lip noted, participants were already well managed at baseline, with high adherence to guideline-recommended care and low event rates, while use of the mobile application was lower than anticipated.

The results provide useful guidance for the design of future integrated care interventions, indicating that additional benefit is harder to demonstrate in populations where clinical management is already close to optimal, and that patient engagement with digital tools remains a key condition for success.

Multimorbidity and atrial fibrillation

AFFIRMO also took part in the session "Multimorbidity in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation: focus on AFFIRMO, EHRA-PATHS, and AF-B-STEP" which brought together insights from three European initiatives working on this complex area of care.

Professor Vetrano opened the AFFIRMO contribution "Multimorbidity, polypharmacy, and frailty: the healthcare and economic burden seen in the atrial fibrillation population" by presenting the project's findings on multimorbidity patterns in older people with atrial fibrillation and their association with clinical outcomes, showing how different clusters of coexisting conditions shape the course and prognosis of the disease. The presentations were well received and opened a wide-ranging discussion on how "cluster medicine" can be implemented in real-world practice, examining both the barriers and the opportunities involved. Participants agreed that closer collaboration between geriatrics and cardiology is essential if this approach is to translate into everyday clinical care.

Atrial fibrillation featured prominently across the congress programme more broadly, with late-breaking results on catheter ablation, exercise-based interventions and ablation strategies presented alongside AFFIRMO, reflecting the growing attention given to how this condition is detected, quantified and treated in everyday practice.

Learn more and watch the sessions here.

Looking ahead

Participation in ESC Congress 2026 gave AFFIRMO the opportunity to share its findings with the international cardiovascular community and to contribute to the broader discussion on the future of care for patients with complex health needs. The lessons emerging from the trial will inform the project's final recommendations on how integrated, personalised and patient-centred models of care can best support older people living with atrial fibrillation and multimorbidity.

Further information is available on ESC news