Article preview from Start-Up - June, 2010
iRhythm Technologies, which has been quietly working on a new platform in arrhythmia monitoring since 2006, came forward with much éclat at the 2010 Heart Rhythm Society Meeting in May. There the company made a two-part announcement: the signing of a co-marketing agreement with St. Jude Medical Inc. and a $10 million Series B round led by St. Jude, with the participation of existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, Synergy Life Science Partners, and two additional undisclosed investors. The co-marketing agreement provides validation for the young company operating in a new field, and for its established big partner, a way to use a new diagnostic technology to assure more efficient use of its therapeutic equipment by the health care system.
iRhythm Technologies Inc., which has been quietly working on a new platform in arrhythmia monitoring since 2006, came forward with much éclat at the 2010 Heart Rhythm Society Meeting in May. There the company made a two-part announcement: the signing of a co-marketing agreement with St. Jude Medical Inc. and a $10 million Series B round led by St. Jude, with the participation of existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, Synergy Life Science Partners, and two additional undisclosed investors. The co-marketing agreement provides validation for the young company operating in a new field, and for its established big partner, a way to use a new diagnostic technology to assure more efficient use of its therapeutic equipment by the health care system.
Uday Kumar, MD, chief medical technology officer of iRhythm, founded the company to improve patients' access to care. Specifically, iRhythm wanted to address the gap between the environments where most patients with cardiac symptoms initially present – the primary care physician's office or the emergency room, for example – and the cardiologist's office, where diagnosis and treatment usually take place. To address this unmet need Kumar realized it would be critical to focus on simple, low-cost, intuitive devices. Today, patients with intermittent cardiac symptoms may get lost in the mix. "The patient goes to the emergency room for symptoms such as palpitations, but when he or she gets there, the symptom has resolved, so the patient is told to come back if it happens again, or instead may be referred for monitoring at a later date," says Kumar, who is a cardiologist and a cardiac electrophysiologist himself. Many people don't go on to have that definitive course of monitoring, and potentially serious and treatable arrhythmias go undiagnosed, Kumar says.
As with many diseases, the early diagnosis of arrhythmias leads to early intervention and improved outcomes. There are perhaps as many as 2.5 million people in the US with atrial fibrillation (AF), the most prevalent type of cardiac arrhythmia, although only 160,000 are diagnosed annually. According to the Framingham Heart Study, people with atrial fibrillation have a 1.5 to 2 fold increase in general mortality compared to the general population; AF is a leading risk factor for stroke, implicated in 15%-20% of the 700,000 strokes annually. Once diagnosed, there are surgical and medical options to treat AF and reduce the risk of stroke. The alarming statistics above thus underscore the need for better methods of diagnosing patients.
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