CardioSmart takes the ambiguity out of cardiac diagnosis

Millions of patients worldwide require treatment for heart valve disorders every year. Aortic stenosis (AS) is one of the most common and serious heart valve diseases, where 50% of patients with untreated symptoms die within a two-year period. The diagnosis is made from an ultrasound scan of the heart. Yet, many patients with symptomatic AS experience a delayed diagnosis, and in about 30% of the cases the diagnosis is uncertain and needs to be repeated with additional tests.

Today’s diagnostic methods are highly dependent on time consuming manual interpretation. Dr. Stig Urheim, an acknowledged cardiologist and researcher at the heart disease department of Haukeland University Hospital, is developing CardioSmart – an efficient and standardized decision support tool that provides precise and timely diagnostics of cardiovascular diseases. The invention takes ambiguity out of cardiac diagnosis using an innovative mathematical algorithm and a real time method for assessing and continuously monitoring cardiac data.

CardioSmart will reduce the time of diagnostics by about 30%. In doing so, it brings direct health benefits to the 2+ million AS patients in Europe and North America, and dramatically increases the productivity of cardiac care in the healthcare system.

The project has received funding from Norwegian Research Council. We are now looking for potential collaboration partners to pilot the solution, both end users (e.g. hospitals) as well as technology providers (3D echocardiography hardware and software).

Owner: Stig Urheim MD PhD, Chief Section of Cardiovascular Imaging, Dept Heart Disease, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway