Noninvasive Hypokalemia Detection from Single-Lead AI-ECG: Development, Multicenter Validation, and Prospective Pilot Study in the Emergency Department

Hypokalemia is a common and potentially life-threatening electrolyte abnormality in emergency care, yet rapid noninvasive screening remains difficult in time-critical triage settings. We developed PocketED-K, a single-lead AI-ECG prescreening model initialized from ECGFounder, and evaluated it in retrospective multicenter cohorts and a prospective handheld pilot. Retrospective development and validation included 37,115 patients from MC-MED and MIMIC-ED, and the pilot enrolled 18 patients at Peking University First Hospital. Hypokalemia was defined as venous serum potassium < 3.5 mmol/L. PocketED-K achieved AUROCs of 0.8189 (95% CI 0.8172–0.8207) in internal testing, 0.8104 (95% CI 0.8092–0.8115) in temporal validation, and 0.7889 (95% CI 0.7692–0.8074) in independent external validation; external negative predictive value was 0.9911 (95% CI 0.9895–0.9925). Higher predicted risk was associated with ST-segment depression, T-wave flattening or inversion, and relative U-wave prominence. The prospective handheld pilot provided an initial signal of workflow feasibility in real-world acquisition. These findings support single-lead AI-ECG as a low-burden prescreening tool to prioritize potassium testing in emergency care.