Eko Health this week received FDA clearance for a new AI-powered tool that supports early detection of low ejection fraction, a key indicator of heart failure.

Approximately 6.2 million Americans live with heart failure, and many experience a reduced ejection fraction, a condition that occurs when the heart muscle pumps out less blood than normal with each contraction.

Traditional methods of detecting reduced ejection fraction, such as echocardiography, are expensive and require specialized training, so they are often not available in primary care settings. Unfortunately, this means that many heart failure patients are not diagnosed until their symptoms worsen and they need to be seen by an emergency room specialist.

“Many patients with heart failure take a very long time to be diagnosed. Early symptoms of heart failure can be very difficult for clinicians,” Eko CEO Connor Landgraf said in an interview. Ta. “The number of these patients is alarmingly high, ranging from 25% to more than 50%, and they are not diagnosed until they are hospitalized or have really severe acute symptoms.”

Founded in 2013, Landgraf’s company aims to help clinicians move away from this reactive disease detection model. Best known for his digital stethoscope and his AI platform.

Eko’s digital stethoscope has been on the market for nearly a decade and is used by “approximately 500,000” clinicians, Landgraf said. His company’s AI platform, released last year, uses machine learning algorithms to search a large database of heart sounds to determine whether the sounds a primary care provider hears through a stethoscope are normal or abnormal.

Landgraf explained that the company’s newly approved AI tool will enable healthcare professionals using the Eko stethoscope to detect low ejection fraction in just 15 seconds during routine exams.

“We are very pleased that this will become part of our emergency department, urgent care and primary care testing, allowing us to identify patients with signs of illness and quickly refer them to the appropriate specialist.” he stated. said.

The tool was developed in collaboration with Mayo Clinic, Landgraf added. He noted that Eko trained the model on his Mayo clinic’s electrocardiogram (ECG) dataset and collaborated with the health system’s cardiologists on the tool’s design.

Landgraf also said that Eko’s low ejection fraction detection tool is “the first of its kind.”

Anumana sells an algorithm that uses a 12-lead ECG to detect reduced ejection fraction, and Eko’s tool is built into the company’s digital stethoscope. This means Eko is the first company to build a low ejection fraction detection AI tool that is highly accessible to frontline clinicians, he declared.