The Food and Drug Administration in the USA has, through its ‘De Novo’ pathway process, approved AI software for use in echocardiograms.
Echocardiograms use ultrasound to effectively take pictures of the heart. A bit like fish-finder sonar on your weekend fishing boat. It’s a non-invasive procedure but calls for great skill from experienced clinicians to get the quality of image they need in the area they need it.
Caption Health a San Francisco based start-up has developed this AI software package to enable less skilled staff to render some excellent images of the heart. The images are later viewed by an experienced cardiologist to make a diagnosis.
As there is increasing need for echocardiagrams and only a handful of very skilled ultrasound clinicians, this AI software will greatly increase the availability of the imaging machines 24/7.
To date Caption Health has raised $18 million. Not bad for a start-up.