Cardiologs Raises $6.4M Series A
05.10.2017
Company’s cloud-based and Artificial Intelligence-powered ECG analysis solution assists healthcare professionals in screening for heart diseases.
Cardiologs Technologies announced today that it has raised $6.4 million in a Series A financing with a syndicate of life science and technology investors (Idinvest, ISAI, Kurma Partners, Partech Ventures) and with continued support and participation from current investor Bpifrance seed fund (F3A). This round brings total funding of Cardiologs to $10 million. Proceeds will be dedicated to fast-forward commercialisation of the Cardiologs ECG Analysis Platform in the United States and Europe.“Cardiologs’ fundamentals are outstanding. Its ability to combine deep learning and medical expertise can usher a new era for cardiology”. “Ambulatory ECG analysis and reporting is a labor-intensive process that can result in delays for arrhythmia detection and increased costs,” said Yann Fleureau, co-founder and CEO of Cardiologs Technologies. “Our Cardiologs team has trained a neural network using more than 500,000 recordings, and this training dataset keeps growing,” said Fleureau. “The result is that Cardiologs is designed to recognise patterns in a cardiac signal for fast and precise analysis of heart diseases in a similar intuitive manner as expert cardiologists,” said Fleureau.In July 2017, Cardiologs announced FDA clearance of its Cardiologs ECG Analysis Platform, an ECG- analysis web solution powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Cardiologs assists physicians in screening for 10 arrhythmias including Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) using ambulatory ECG monitoring recordings.
Why solving Ambulatory ECG analysis is important
- Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) is the most common human arrhythmia, affecting about 33 million patients worldwide. AFib is a growing problem in cardiovascular disease and is associated with an increased risk of severe stroke, heart failure, and death.1
- AFib is often asymptomatic and silent with stroke as the first manifestation. Recent stroke registries indicate that AFib is associated with one-third of all ischemic strokes.
- The Ambulatory ECG records continuously the electrical activity of the heart (ECG) up to a few weeks. It is the gold standard examination to detect AFib and other arrhythmias (for example bradycardia, which is a cause of syncope).
- The Ambulatory ECG analysis aims to detect the episodes of arrhythmia. Only a few minutes of arrhythmia can occur during a whole week of recording, making the process labor- intensive.
- Solving ambulatory ECG analysis results in significant cost-savings for the healthcare system, earlier diagnostic and decreased risk of stroke for the patient, time savings and increased performance for the healthcare professional.
How Cardiologs works
- A cardiologist recovers a digital ECG from any compatible ECG device — such as a Holter monitor, smartwatch, ECG patch or even a connected t-shirt—then uploads it to the Cardiologs cloud and is able to immediately leverage our technology to identify relevant events.
- It is especially powerful for long-term recordings that require today a very laborious manual analysis process.
- ECG monitoring product and service companies can also benefit from Cardiologs in just three lines of code via the company’s web API.
Availability in Europe and the United States
The Cardiologs solution is CE-marked and has been approved to detect up to 100 cardiac abnormalities in Europe. Currently, the detection of 10 significant arrhythmias is available in the United States, which covers most clinical cases of ambulatory ECG monitoring. The company plans to further extend its AI capacity beyond ECG diagnostics claims.
Supporting quotes
“Cardiologs is the perfect example of applying state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to help professionals work much faster and more accurately. And in this case, it can save a lot of lives,” said Benoist Grossmann, Managing Partner at Idinvest.J-David Chamboredon, CEO of ISAI, added: “Cardiologs’ fundamentals are outstanding. Its ability to combine deep learning and medical expertise can usher a new era for cardiology.””Cardiologs has assembled a world-class team with a unique combination of mathematical and engineering skills,” said Reza Malekzadeh, General Partner at Partech Ventures. “It is great to see them out to solve a global problem with a solution that will bring better healthcare to a greater number at a more affordable cost.”
Scientific Validation of Cardiologs
When defining the reliability of diagnosing AFib and other arrhythmias, the term Positive Predictive Value (PPV) refers to the percentage of true positive cases among total cases detected. Conventional “state-of- the-art” PPV for detecting AFib is less than 59%[1]. The PPV for Cardiologs’ detection of AFib was 91%[2] included in the cleared FDA submission. In addition, also as included in the cleared FDA submission, Cardiologs’ sensitivity for detecting AFib was reported to be 97%[3] (the percentage of positive cases truly identified) and was superior to “state-of-the-art” conventional methods of detecting AFib and other arrhythmias. Cardiologs’ study results have been published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (2016, Vol. 23(2S 41-55). The study’s investigators concluded: “This (Cardiologs) method may be more reliable and accurate than previous methods in the diagnosis of AFib on long-duration ambulatory ECG and other monitoring devices”.
About ISAI
Launched in 2010, ISAI is “the” French tech entrepreneurs’ fund gathering more than 200 entrepreneurs across the world. Almost 150 successful entrepreneurs, who have invested in ISAI, and more than 50 startup cofounders supported by ISAI share the collective ambition to write great entrepreneurial stories. With €160M under management, ISAI Gestion, authorized by French regulator AMF, can fund and support high potential companies at early stages (venture capital, €150k to €2M initial ticket with ability to follow on) or at more mature stages (growth equity, €1M to €15M investments).
About Partech
Founded in 1982 in Silicon Valley, Partech Ventures is a global investment firm with a team spread across offices in Paris, Berlin and San Francisco. Partech Ventures partners with entrepreneurs at the seed (Partech Entrepreneur), venture (Partech International) and/or growth (Partech Growth) stages. Companies backed by Partech Ventures have completed 21 initial public offerings and more than 50 major M&A transactions with leading international companies. For more information visit www.partechventures.com and follow @partechventures.
About Idinvest Partners
Idinvest Partners is a leading pan-European PE firm focused on the mid-market with over €8 billion under management. Since 1997, Idinvest has played a part in major breakthroughs in the growth and development of information technology and the internet in Europe, financing companies such as Criteo, Deezer, Vestiaire Collective & Talend.
About F3A – (Ambition Amorçage Angels, Bpifrance seed fund)
Launched in 2016 with €50 million under management, the F3A fund is a seed fund dedicated to startups in the digital sector. Managed by Bpifrance Investissement, it is part of the ‘Programme d’investissements d’avenir’ (PIA). This fund co-invests alongside business angels in seed stage startups with a strong potential of innovation and growth related to the digital economy. Cardiologs Technologies was the first investment of the fund in early 2016.
About Kurma Partners
Created in 2009, Kurma Partners is a European leading venture capital group specialised in Life Sciences and managing Kurma Biofund I, Kurma biofund II and its accelerator fund, Kurma Diagnostics. The company has more than €250 million under management and develops an investment strategy supported by both the selection of best investment opportunity in Europe and the development of a “proprietary” portfolio of company in which Kurma intervenes at creation stage. www.kurmapartners.com
1 Source: European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (2016, Vol. 23(2S 41-55).
2 Duration PPV results from testing following the recognized consensus standards ANSI/AAMI EC57:2012 and IEC 60601-2-47:2012 on MIT-BIH database.
3 Duration Sensitivity results from testing following the recognized consensus standards ANSI/AAMIEC57:2012 and IEC 60601-2-47:2012 on MIT-BIH database.
