AccurKardia said it was granted a U.S. patent for its machine-learning-based algorithm that can identify cardiac amyloidosis from a standard 12-lead ECG. Use of ECG to identify cardiac amyloidosis could offer a paradigm shift with a much less expensive diagnostic test than the current standard of nuclear imaging.
The company said its artificial intelligence (AI) can identify all major amyloidosis subtypes, including AL amyloidosis, wild-type and hereditary ATTR amyloidosis.
AccurKardia said the technology is designed top help solve the under diagnosis issue, where many times amyloidosis is simply diagnosed as heart failure and patients do not receive what could be life-saving drug therapy. The company said there are studies estimating that between 13-15% of patients at heart failure clinics have undiagnosed cardiac amyloidosis. Identifying the disease early is critical for treatment efficacy and survival, as the available drugs can stop abnormal amyloid protein deposition, but they cannot reverse the cumulative damage already done to heart tissue.