Acarix, a Swedish/Danish medical device company specializing in non-invasive, non-radiation acoustic detection of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), has received a major strategic investment from the Chinese company Puhua Jingxin Guzhou Health Management Partnership (Puhua Jingxin).
The aim of the double-digit million investment is to accelerate market introduction of the already CE-marked CADScorSystem. The system combines acoustic detection of turbulent arterial flow and myocardial movement with advanced algorithms in a handheld device to provide a patient specific CAD-score in less than 10 minutes.
“Coronary Artery Disease affects more than 120 million people worldwide but the current diagnostic pathway, which can rapidly escalate to expensive imaging and invasive coronary angiography, is inefficient”. He continues: “a recent Danish study showed that more than 90% of patients presenting CAD like symptoms to their general practitioner do not have CAD”. With the Acarix CADScor®System Acarix can provide an easy to use non-invasive tool able to rule out CAD with 96% negative predictive value. Christiansen concludes: “this translates into a potential to reduce onward patient referrals by ~50%. – a win-win for patients, payers and physicians,” says Søren Rysholt Christiansen, CEO of Acarix.
The collaboration with Puhua Jingxin willl enhance Acarix’s ongoing market entry strategy which has an initial focus on Germany, UK, Sweden and Denmark.
“Following successful completion of a further validation study, we were already on track for reimbursement applications and commercial launch in Q2 2017. We are delighted to partner with Puhua Jingxin – a joint healthcare fund aligning strategic resources from Puhua Healthcare and major pharmaceutical company Zhejiang Jingxin Pharmaceuticals. This new investment will enable us to ramp up both production and our sales organization,” says Christiansen.
