UK-BASED ECHOPOINT RAISES €3.5M TO IMPROVE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF HEART DISEASE
UK-based medical limited startup ‘Echopoint raises €3.5m’ in a bid to develop optical sensing that will help cardiologists and patients suffering from heart disease navigate ‘gray zone’, where the need for such treatment is unclear. Should medical doctors treat such areas! Then they certainly need proves.
According to statistics, it’s has been reported that Coronary heart disease is one of the major cause of death worldwide, while on the other hand, it is also reported that more than seven million in the UK consisting both male and female have been diagnosed of this killer disease. However, this disease causes the narrowing of the patient arteries which has formally been treated by inserting a tiny tube known as stents. But there is a huge challenge with this tube, it is very expensive and risky.
In a bid to address this, Echopoint raised €3.5m from the Government and venture capital supports in order to develop fibre optic technology that would help doctors speed up the diagnosis of heart attacks in patients treated in nations National Health Service centers. This means that the fibre optic cable and sensor are to be deployed in place of the previous – ‘Stent’.
Based on the fact that Echopoint raised €3.5m, the spinout company from University College London will develop this device that will be inserted into the bloodstream via a patient artery, which when deployed would cub lengthy laboratory tests and provide accurate blood pressure and flow in real-time.
This will practically reduce stent implants in patients and is also cheaper. Responding to this development, the CTO at Echopoint ‘Dr. Adrien Desjardins’ said: “Coronary heart disease is endemic worldwide but far too often the decision to implant a stent is based on sub-optimal information”.
“Our technology addresses the ‘grey zone’ of patients where the requirement for a stent is currently difficult to determine. By using advanced optical sensing technology, we hope to significantly improve the accuracy of current treatments, saving healthcare costs and preventing unnecessary operations that could be treated with medicines”. – Source EU-Startup
The startup (Echopoint) was founded last year in November, led by an experienced MedTech entrepreneur and once CEO of Tissue Regenix, ‘Anthony Odell’, and the host of others.
Also in another development, the investment director at AlbionVC – David Grimm – said: “Stents are an invaluable, cornerstone treatment but are risky to insert and not always the best course of action for a patient”. Adding that,
“Echopoint’s remarkable technology has the potential to transform heart disease diagnosis and treatment. We are very excited by the potential of their technology platform, which utilizes the latest fiber optic sensing and imaging techniques borne out of UCL’s world-leading academic research”. – Source EU-Startup
- Great relief for NHS patients as Echopoint raises €3.5m or what’s your take?
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