Special Report: Blood pressure monitoring tech is a 100 years old, so CardieX is about to shake things up with its cutting edge concepts.
Cardiovascular monitoring medtechCardieX (ASX:CDX)is coming of age in 2020, as the company hits ‘go’ on plans to float multiple new products into new markets.
The company is on the cusp of launching eight new devices and software solutions into the consumer health market as it seeks to solve the largest public healthcare crisis today: not COVID19, but cardiovascular disease.
CardieX sells the only Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved non-invasive devices that measure central blood pressure, a reading of the pressure at the aorta as it enters the heart. The only other way to take this reading is via an invasive stent in an ICU setting.
“In the US, which is our main market, 50 per cent of adults are considered hypertensive and 1.3bn people around the world. Globally, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of humans. And now we have the pandemic where both of those conditions are co-indicated with 90 per cent of the COVID19 deaths,” said Craig Cooper, CEO and managing director of CardieX.
“Blood pressure measurement methods haven’t changed much in the last 100 years, which makes this a multi-billion dollar market opportunity for CardieX.”
It’s aiming to gain three more FDA approvals for new consumer, wearable and medical products in 2021.
Disrupting a 100 year old health sector
The blood pressure machines used in hospitals, doctor clinics and pharmacies measure peripheral blood pressure, which doesn’t give an accurate reading on what is happening inside the heart or organs.
“We catch upwards of 30 per cent of patients who fall out of the treatment net because they are being identified as having high normal blood pressure, when in fact they have an undiagnosed cardiovascular condition,” Cooper told *.
“Our models show there are upwards of $500bn of healthcare savings annually by using CardieX’s devices to find and treat these conditions early.”
2021 goals
CardieX has two long standing products which it sells to clinicians and researchers such as Novartis and the Cleveland Clinic, the Xcel SphygmaCor which makes up about 90 per cent of its revenue, and the Oscar II.
But it has been developing a wider range of applications of the core technology which it plans to start selling into three big markets.
The medical/home-use market is forecast to be worth $US2.5bn in 2025 by Fortune Business Insights.
Medical and consumer wearables is seen to touch $US37bn by 2025, by Industry Stats Report, which CardieX is accessing via partnerships with industry luminaries like Blumio and Mobvoi for a smartwatch.
And finally, there’s the software-as-a-service (SaaS) opportunity, forecast at $US509bn by Grand View Research and including the company’s ARTY cloud-based digital hub, clinician portal and consumer app.
The plan is, over the next year, to launch into multiple markets around the world devices for clinicians and consumers, backed by software that can tap into the new zeitgeist around remote monitoring.
“We’re looking at telehealth on two fronts. We have an investment in a telehealth provider for chronic disease, inHealth Medical, with which we’re capitalising on the shift in the US to remote monitoring, and we’re developing our own remote patient monitoring ecosystem,” Cooper said.
“All of the devices that we’re developing are being built out to create a remote patient monitoring ecosystem that connects patients with medical providers and health insurers, so it’s an end-to-end management system but also a reimbursement system for medical professionals.”
Managing the after effects of a pandemic
While many medical device companies are struggling for traction during the COVID19 pandemic, thecrisis has highlighted the need for CardieX’s devices and accelerated trends already in motion, Cooper said.
“COVID19 is seen more and more not as a respiratory disease but as a cardiovascular disease. Multiple COVID19 patients across multiple studies are all co-indicated with hypertension or cardiovascular disease,” he said.
In addition to people with undiagnosed or minimally managed cardiovascular problems, survivors of COVID19 will also require deep management in the future.
“The flood of survivors are subject to some form of respiratory or cardiovascular damage, so there is significant need going forward to better manage this patient population, and current technologies are not up to task.”
CardieX is forecasting massive growth in consumer wearables and at-home devices, as the US and the world continue to grapple with deaths from cardiovascular conditions and hypertension.
By 2024 it expects SaaS and digital services to make up the majority of its revenue — up from nothing today — and for its FDA-protected market to continue to grow strongly.
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