MediCardia
Trailblazing Cutting-Edge Cardiological Treatment With a Virtual Touch

Even though cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) have been deemed as the ‘number one’ killer globally and the leading cause of premature death, battling CVDs is becoming an increasingly uphill task with each passing day. The primary reason is an abysmal doctor-to-patient ratio, which is the foremost hindrance in providing proper care for patients battling CVDs. The latest eye-opening industry reports claim that there are 130 million patients diagnosed with cardiovascular disease in the US alone, but only 30,000 cardiologists to attend to them. Adding to the woes, the ratio has worsened in the wake of a nationwide transition to the value-based healthcare model. Now, when a healthcare provider needs to meet the various conditions to provide quality value-based healthcare, the amount of time and effort being put in for a particular patient has significantly increased. Amid these state of affairs, how can thousands of cardiologists treat millions of patients and still devote the required amount of time for each patient while staying on par with the requirements of a value-based healthcare model? Well, Wisconsin-based MediCardia Health is showing the way.

MediCardia Health offers an eponymous cardiology-focused platform that helps doctors keep track of patient outcomes at all times and provide the highest level of value-based care. It serves as a unified and common interface for EHRs and remote technologies, including wearables, consumer home medical devices, and implanted cardiac rhythm devices, and helps both doctors and patients gain total control of their health status. “By incorporating embedded intelligence and automation, we are helping doctors stay ahead of patient conditions and improve clinician efficacy while achieving enhanced care experience and lowered operational costs,” states Indrajit Choudhuri, founder and CEO of MediCardia Health.
Built using the latest technological standards, the MediCardia HeartChart platform’s dynamic dashboard presents the right patient data to the doctors in an actionable manner. When doctors receive the most up-to-date information from the collated data the moment a patient visits them, it enables them to analyze the current cardiovascular health status of the patient and modulate medications accordingly. As a result, whenever the doctor meets a patient in person, they can spend the entire duration of that visit to extensively discuss a range of issues that often don’t come up due to the time-crunch that doctors regularly face. On the other hand, patients also have access to the platform so they can gain insights about their cardiovascular health from their own data and get engaged in the whole treatment process. This is how the platform strengthens the bond between the providers and patients, which is extremely important for the success of a healthcare delivery organization.

Through the Wheel of Time

Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with specialization in signal processing and artificial intelligence (AI) for ECG beat classification, Choudhuri began using artificial intelligence for healthcare applications, especially cardiology. The move to the cardiology domain was partly due to the prior experiences Choudhuri had in watching his family members battle CVDs all their life. Post completion of his residency in cardiology fellowship from New York and cardiac electrophysiology training from Wisconsin, Choudhuri began developing the idea of putting AI into the hands of the healthcare providers to transform the way cardiovascular diseases were being treated.

With this broad vision, he set out to use data in a much more intelligent and automated way by developing a cardiology platform that was really much more clinician-centric than the current platforms or electronic medical records.

Replacing traditional, passive EMRs where the doctor needs to log in and spend time extracting patient information, Choudhuri visualized an alternative where all the huge data sets would be funneled into a single platform to harness the power of an aggregated dataset. It would serve as the physician-patient interface that would allow cardiologists to effortlessly access patient data and devote more time discussing important issues with the patient, thereby creating a better patient experience. Thus, MediCardia was born. “MediCardia is all about putting the power of healthcare information into the hands of the people,” states Choudhuri.

Especially in light of the pandemic-ridden times where healthcare delivered through an in-person paradigm is deemed completely unrealistic and untenable, MediCardia is the perfect solution with its blend of cutting-edge features and latest remote technologies that help healthcare providers create a multiplicative effect in which many patients can be provided care remotely as well as in person.

Staying Up-to-The-Minute

For a company that is on a mission to build the healthcare platform of tomorrow, it is quite expected of them to be on par with every technological advancement and any significant changes in the ever-evolving sphere of healthcare services.

To that end, MediCardia’s unique workforce ensures they are well ahead of any considerable shifts in the healthcare system to deliver a platform that is in sync with the latest standards at all times. Besides, they have adopted a culture that is quite different with respect to most startups. While startups generally cater to a niche target audience where they start small and grow, MediCardia always believes in thinking big right from the beginning and using the power of innovation to strive forward. “This is why we are keen on developing a platform that will use data and intelligence to meet the needs of not only healthcare providers and patients but all the key stakeholders including healthcare organizations, payers, and strategic partners as well,” adds Choudhuri.

Further elaborating on the profound benefits of the platform, Choudhuri highlights an instance when an elderly gentleman had to be continually hospitalized with congestive heart failure despite multiple procedures and medication adjustments. But after enrolling him into the MediCardia platform, the providers who were using it could leverage the combined benefits of patient monitoring and embedded intelligence to constantly surveil his health conditions and accordingly adjust medications that prevented him from being re-hospitalized for over a year now. “It is a major success for the organization not only because they have kept the health of the patient in check but also for avoiding re-hospitalization penalties,” says Choudhuri.

For the Days to Come

Taking a leap forward into the future, MediCardia has just closed its seed round, with $3 million raised. Backed by this investment, the company is dramatically accelerating its platform development in natural language processing, enhancing remote patient monitoring capabilities by implementing more superior AI and gaining higher expertise in machine learning algorithms to make it the go-to platform for both doctors and patients in treating cardiovascular diseases. Meanwhile, Choudhuri believes 10 years down the line, MediCardia will not only be focused on cardiology but will act as an all-round healthcare data platform fed by even more intelligence and societal medical guidelines to help physicians deliver top-quality care to patients. Concurrently, Choudhuri also acknowledges that healthcare, today, is more reactive than proactive as people only take action once a problem is identified. However, once MediCardia reaches its fullest potential, it would eliminate the necessity for a follow-up visit as the system itself will be able to monitor how a patient’s health is progressing. Subsequently, physicians can proactively identify when a patient’s risk exceeds a certain threshold and drive the necessary intervention or schedule a follow-up visit.

MediCardia is all about putting the power of healthcare information into the hands of the people

But at the same time, the company is also mindful of keeping automation from replacing the uniqueness of personalized care. “Personal care is becoming a rarity these days as the healthcare provider is spending much more time on-screen than they actually are with the patient. So we want to return the personal touch to healthcare through the right digital solutions,” concludes Choudhuri.