French healthtech startup Volta Medical works on novel artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to treat cardiac arrhythmias. It has announced that has raised €23M funding led by Glide Healthcare along with participation from existing shareholder Pasteur Mutualité.
Utilisation of funds
With this investment, the company eyes to establish its CE marked and FDA-approved VX1 AI software solution. Volta Medical will also involve in further R&D activities and rollout commercial activities across Europe and the US. Also, the French healthtech startup is recruiting for the international multicentre trial TAILORED-AF.
In addition to the funding round, Volta Medical has added two new Board members – Janke Dittmer, General Partner at Gilde Healthcare and former medical device industry top executive, Denis Gestin.
After developing the first commercially available AI software to help electrophysiologists improve management of cardiac arrythmias, Volta Medical is now preparing to transform the way ablation procedures will take place in the future.
Theophile Mohr-Durdez, CEO and co-founder of Volta Medical says: “We are excited to be able to complete our highly ambitious medical program with the start of TAILORED-AF, a new randomised controlled trial (RCT). This trial aims to demonstrate how our AI software can help physicians optimise both efficacy and efficiency when performing complex procedures to treat heart rhythm disturbances.”
About atrial fibrillation (AF)
“AF can be considered an “electrical storm” in the atria in which all synchronised activities have disappeared, and the necessary coordination of the contraction stops. This can lead to a number of symptoms including palpitations, shortness of breath, and in some patients, heart failure. AF is also a major risk factor for stroke, as stagnant blood in the atrium during AF may lead the formation of a clot, that can migrate to the brain. AF increases the likelihood of stroke by four to five times and AFib-induced strokes that are generally associated with more severe damage,” according to the company’s press release.
As per recent studies, Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an extremely expensive public health problem. It has affected nearly 6 million patients in the US in 2019 and 11 million patients in Europe in 2018 and its prevalence is estimated to double by 2060. In Europe, 120,000-215,000 new cases are projected to rise each year reaching a total AF patient population prevalence of 14-17 million by 2030.
TAILORED-AF trial
TAILORED-AF is an international, multicenter trial designed to compare the VX1 AI software ablation strategy with currently used conventional anatomical ablation approaches. According to Dr Tom De Potter, Head of Electrophysiology, OLV Hospital, Aalst, Belgium and one of the TAILORED-AF trial investigators, “treatment of the more severe forms of drug-resistant persistent AF remains a major challenge in our field, both due to the large number of patients affected and lack of therapeutic strategies that can offer predictable efficacy.”
“Thanks to the software’s ability to identify signals that are relevant, from those that are less relevant, one of its greatest and most unique benefits is to allow for a more easily reproducible approach to ablatio,” he adds.
About Volta Medical
Volta Medical was founded in 2016 by Julien Seitz, Théophile Mohr Durdez, and Clément Bars in Marseille. Its goal is to drastically improve cardiac arrhythmia management by developing data-driven medical devices based on large databases of procedural data with the highest standards of data protection. VX1 is its first product, which assists cardiologists for the real-time identification of specific abnormal electrograms called dispersed electrograms. According to the company, VX1 is CE marked and FDA cleared.
It last raised $2.8M (nearly €2.3M) in its Seed round of funding led by Groupe Pasteur Mutualité.
