Video capture of an FFR-angio image-derived FFR technology from CathWorks

During a presentation at the "Mind The Tech" conference in London, Professor Ran Kornowski, Director of the cardiology unit at the Belinson Hospital in Israel, presented a start-up he and his partners founded. That company, called “Cathworks” has been making waves for having developed a breakthrough technology that is currently used by catheterization centers all over the United States and Japan.

"This is an innovative and ground-breaking solution based on artificial intelligence for thousands of catheterists in the world whose goal is to bring new insights into the world of catheterization and to change the treatment methods that have been used until now," said Prof. Kornowski. "I developed with my partners a start-up that recently signed an extensive strategic cooperation agreement with the global Medtronic company."

At the conference, the professor shared his entrepreneurial story with those present. "We found a solution to a dilemma faced by cardiologists and catheterists all over the world. I went through a journey from identifying the medical problem, to finding a solution with founding partners from the field of computing and medical engineering; Dr. Yifat Lavi and Guy Lavi to the establishment of the cardiology startup Cathworks."

According to Prof. Kornowski, "Every year, approximately 2 million diagnostic cardiac catheterizations are performed worldwide. Diagnostic cardiac catheterization is a procedure whose main purpose is to give the doctor imaging information about the condition of the heart's arteries in order to make a fateful and significant decision about the patient's future. Heart artery disease is the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in the western world. The question that is on the agenda during the catheterization is which way to take it. Should we act with drug treatment only, release the blockage with a balloon and stent or refer the patient to the operating room for bypasses?

"As a cardiologist, you perform thousands of diagnostic catheterizations, and every time the thought crossed my mind, there must be another way to assess the severity of the strictures in catheterization and without needing additional invasive measures for this purpose. After about a decade of development and research, we finally managed to bring the solution to the world of catheterizations."

According to Prof. Kornowski, "Today, thanks to the innovative development, catheterists and cardiologists can get the same vital physiological information of the heart arteries without an additional invasive procedure and without adding risk to the patient and additional medical procedures to open the stenosis, or be content with conservative drug treatment."

"The ability to characterize an unfulfilled medical need in your field of practice, develop technology that will solve a significant problem, connect with the right people, promote development and research, obtain investment rounds, obtain strict regulatory approvals in various countries and enter catheterization centers around the world as a commercial medical product, this is the achievement of a valuable goal, I call meaning", Prof. Kornowski concluded.

 

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