DiACardio, a Software company, revolutionizes the practice of evaluating “Ultrasound of the heart” (“Echocardiography”). Ultrasound devices are being used increasingly in many types of Point-of-Care locations, including cardiology departments, emergency rooms, rural medical facilities, and even ambulances. In the near future, even GPs will begin using ultrasound devices. The medical staffs at these Points of Care locations find it difficult to evaluate the images on the screen.
Coronary artery disease (CAD), the most common cardiac disease, is caused by atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries, a condition which causes a decrease in the blood supply to the heart muscle. CAD may cause an impairment of the cardiac muscle function that significantly affects the left ventricular systolic function that performs as the main pump of the heart. Accurate evaluation of the left Ventricle (LV) function and other parts of the heart is crucial for correct patient diagnosis, treatment decisions and prognosis assessment. Ultrasound imaging of the heart, or Echocardiography, is the most widely used imaging technique for evaluation of cardiac heart function. Today, approximately 15 million echo procedures are carried out worldwide each year.
Over the past few years, echocardiography systems have begun to offer better and faster imaging capabilities, coupled with measurement tools intended to assist with evaluation of heart function. However, these tools are manual or semi-automated, and are therefore slow, cumbersome to use and error-prone. For example, the evaluation of LV function is done by subjective “eyeballing” (just by looking) of the LV, or by manually tracing the LV borders on manually-selected frames. Both techniques require the evaluator to draw on vast echo experience in order to achieve an accurate evaluation.
Manual tracing is both insufficiently accurate and time consuming (taking 15-30 minutes to perform). Even the semi-automatic measurements now provided on high-end machines have not proven to be sufficiently reliable. Using the tools currently available are limited in function evaluation. Some of the other parameters such as movements of ventricular wall segments (17 singular areas), can only be perform on most machines through “eyeball”-based evaluation. In contrast, DiACardio’s technology enables a fully automatic dynamic analysis of the heart in action, including full automation of both tracing and analysis processes – performed in several second via a single click of the mouse – across the complete heart cycle. This is a revolutionary improvement compared with the conventional evaluation method, which use manually-selected still images as the basis for calculation.
The ease and speed of DiACardio’s tools also make it practical to carry out short-cycle, repeatable measurements of patients associated with the risk of the cardiotoxicity effect that may be caused by chemotherapy. DiAcardio’s tools are able to analyze patient data online within the echo unit and/or offline on the PACS’s DICOM video file, taking into account the dynamic nature of the heart. DiAcardio technologies are protected by patents (currently at the national phase).
Road map
Our target customers are Ultrasound manufacturers, Healthcare IT (PACS) companies and other medical imaging software companies. We sell our software tools on an OEM basis as an integrated plug-in solution.
R&D Road map -During 2016 we intend to finish the development of additional 4 cardiac automated tools, obtain FDA/CE for LVivo SG and publish academic articles.
M&S road map– we intend to increase dramatically the marketing and sales of LVivo platform and detect potential partners for our current and upcoming tools.
Financial round map – until the end of the first half of 2016 we intend to close an A Round of investment of $5M-$10M that will allows us to expend our technology to other medical imaging platforms and application
Awards
DiaCardio won 1st place at the ICI innovation awards, just few months after winning 1st place at GIA2015 in China. DiACardio, a Software company, revolutionizes the practice of evaluating “Ultrasound of the heart” (“Echocardiography”), by evaluating the heart performance automatically, at the click of a mouse, in just a few seconds. DiaCardio’s software can easily integrated into any ultrasound unit and healthcare IT (PACS) system. The software is FDA cleared and CE approved and initial sales have been obtained. Co-founders, Hila Goldman-Aslan, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder and Dr. Noah Liel-Cohen M.D., Head of the Echocardiography Unit at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva , presented DiaCardio. The ICI is a global innovation in cardiology conference held for the 20th time. This time a specific focus was on revolution of digital/mobile health technologies. Each year more than 70 applications from 22 countries around the world send their application. Only 10 selected companies are invited to present. DiACardio was evaluated by expert panel judges based of 3 principal criteria: the impact on patient care, the impact on novelty and business potential. “Winning this awards is a recognition from the cardiology community of our ground-breaking technology that we have developed at DiACardio” said Hila Goldman-Aslan, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder. Part of wining, DiACardio also gets the chance to present at Europe’s largest cardiovascular conference- EuroPCR 2016 (Paris).
