Heart & Lung Health, a UK-wide network of over 110 expert cardiothoracic radiologists, has partnered with Caristo Diagnostics, a leading cardiac disease diagnostics company, to offer the novel CaRi-Heart® AI technology to predict patients’ risk of developing potentially fatal coronary artery disease.
UK-wide radiologist network to deploy Caristo’s pioneering CaRi-Heart® solution
OXFORD, England, March 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Heart & Lung Health (HLH), a UK-wide network of over 110 expert cardiothoracic radiologists, has partnered with Caristo Diagnostics, a leading cardiac disease diagnostics company, to offer the novel CaRi-Heart® AI technology to predict patients’ risk of developing potentially fatal coronary artery disease.
An estimated 1 million adults in the UK present with chest pain every year1. Many will undergo a coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) scan to diagnose coronary artery disease caused by plaques that narrow or block the arteries that supply blood to the heart. However, three quarters of these patients undergoing CCTAs will display no clear sign of significant narrowing and would traditionally be seen as low risk of having a heart attack. Yet, there are twice as many deaths or cardiac events in these “low risk” patients than in those identified as high-risk.2 A primary cause of these events is coronary inflammation, a crucial risk factor previously unseen in routine CCTAs.
Now for the first time, coronary inflammation is detectable in routine CCTAs using Caristo’s CaRi-Heart technology. Based on research originated at the University of Oxford, CaRi-Heart is a pioneering AI technology that predicts heart attack risk by assessing coronary inflammation and integrating plaque and clinical risk factors such as cholesterol levels. The technology provides a non-invasive Fat Attenuation Index Score™ (FAI-Score™) as a patented biomarker for coronary inflammation.
Research studies have shown that among patients who had no plaque and zero calcium at time of CCTA, those with the most abnormal CaRi-Heart test results experienced 11-fold higher risk for cardiac mortality and 5-fold higher risk for major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) than those who had normal CaRi-Heart test results.
With the new partnership, HLH will provide the CaRi-Heart AI-based cardiac assessment as a regular part of the organization’s cardiac health check package in multiple sites across the UK. HLH provides access to award-winning cardiothoracic radiologists with targeted expertise in diagnosis of lung and cardiac conditions. The HLH network provides specialist reporting services for the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as well as a variety of hospitals and academic institutions. HLH has also established itself as the leading provider of lung cancer screening reporting services to the NHS England Targeted Lung Health Check (TLHC) program. Each patient screened with CaRi-Heart by HLH radiologists will be under the care of the referring clinician; either their consultant cardiologist or family doctor, who will manage any cardiac risks identified from the CaRi-Heart technology.
“At HLH, our vision is to deliver rapid and reliable imaging reports that are focused on providing world class patient care. We are pleased to extend access to the award-winning CaRi-Heart AI technology across all our sites in the UK. The inflammatory-driven risk pathway can facilitate early diagnosis of patients at risk of a heart attack, potentially saving thousands of lives,” Dr Jonathan Rodrigues, Chief Medical Officer & Co-Founder of Heart & Lung Health.
In 2022, RadNet, Inc. (www.radnet.com), a U.S. based publicly traded company, acquired 75% interest in HLH. Radnet is a leading national provider of freestanding, fixed-site diagnostic imaging services and related information technology solutions (including artificial intelligence). RadNet has a total of approximately 9,000 employees.
“Early diagnosis and interventions have the potential to significantly improve health outcomes for thousands of patients at risk of coronary artery disease. We are pleased to announce our partnership with Heart & Lung Health, aiming to enhance accessibility to CaRi-Heart technology for patients throughout the UK,” said Frank Cheng, CEO of Caristo Diagnostics.
About Caristo Diagnostics
Caristo Diagnostics is a global leader in cardiac and vascular disease diagnostics and risk prediction. Founded in 2018 as a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, the world’s #1 research university, Caristo has developed a portfolio of imaging-based and AI-assisted platforms that can be applied to aid the prediction and diagnosis of heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. Caristo was highlighted by Nature in 2020 as one of the most exciting science-based companies to have emerged from academic labs.
The CaRi-Heart technology is currently in clinical use in various NHS and private hospitals in the UK, as well as within the EU and Australia. Since 2018, exceptional validation results showing CaRi-Heart technology’s ability to aid the prediction of heart attacks have been published in leading medical journals including the Lancet, JACC, European Heart Journal, and Cardiovascular Research. New research recently presented at the American Heart Association’s Late Breaking Science Sessions has found that the CaRi-Heart technology can predict fatal and non-fatal cardiac events independently from routine clinical risk scores and standard CCTA interpretation and can significantly impact treatment for CAD by transforming risk stratification and management of patients undergoing routine CCTA.
Find Caristo online on its website, LinkedIn and X.
About Heart & Lung Health
Heart & Lung Health (HLH) are a group of UK based subspecialist cardiothoracic radiologists that provide radiology reports, to NHS Trusts, private practice, and academia. They also provide expert advice to large corporate organisations. HLH uses innovative technology to deliver rapid, reliable, and unique subspecialist imaging reports that are focused on providing world-class patient care. HLH radiologists offer subspecialty cardiothoracic expertise that is tailored to individual lung and cardiac conditions, thereby offering a bespoke, individualized diagnostic report for all cardiothoracic imaging. HLH have partnered with leading post-processing software and artificial intelligence companies and have a robust system of audit to ensure high quality performance and industry leading turnaround times. HLH can offer cardiac reporting for “backlog” clearance, ad-hoc studies or as an “end to end” service with a scan acquisition company. For more information, email info@heartlunghealth.com
Caristo Diagnostics contact:
Frank Cheng, Caristo Diagnostics CEO
frank.cheng@caristo.com
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