Creavo Medical Technologies has raised $17 million to develop its heart attack test, VitalScan. The diagnostic is designed to help physicians more quickly rule out serious heart problems as the cause of chest pain, freeing hospitals from the need to take patients through the full cardiac testing pathway.
IP Group led the round with support from Chinese VC shop Puhua Capital and investors from the U.S. and Europe. The investors have come together to equip Creavo to prepare its test to come to market in the European Union while also stepping up its activities on the other side of the Atlantic.
“We will conclude our clinical study in the U.K., build our U.S. operation and associated clinical study, and conduct further research to expand the use of our technology into other applications. [The funding] will also enable us to develop a fully commercial device encompassing all of the learnings from the initial clinical studies,” Creavo chairman Robert Barr said in a statement.
The 756-patient clinical trial is aiming to show Creavo’s device has the sensitivity and specificity to rule out acute coronary syndrome in people who present at emergency departments with chest pain. Creavo has enlisted four U.K. hospitals to test the device, VitalScan, and expects to collect the last of its data in September.
VitalScan is a portable device that uses magnetocardiography to record electromagnetic fluctuations resulting from heart activity. Heart cells that lack oxygen or are necrotic show up on the device as distorted data points. When combined with other sources of information, the lack of such distorted data points could enable physicians to rule out serious heart problems in patients with chest pain.
Creavo is pitching VitalScan as a way for hospitals to cut the time it takes to identify patients who aren’t suffering from a heart attack. As it stands, physicians need to wait for troponin blood tests to determine the cause of chest pain in some patients. This process takes time, as there is a lag between people suffering from chest pain and having elevated levels of troponin. VitalScan is designed to deliver a result within five minutes.