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Although heart disease is Main cause of death In the United States, a large portion of people who have heart attacks are unaware that they have the underlying condition.
Clearly, a cardiovascular imaging startup, hopes to solve this problem. By analyzing CT scans of the heart, the company’s AI software aims to identify coronary artery disease in the early stages, similar to the way mammograms and colonoscopies detect breast and colon cancer.
“The majority of people who will die from heart disease and heart attacks will have no symptoms at all,” said cardiologist James Main, who founded Clearly in 2017. “At some point, we need to start screening the world for heart disease.” The company grew out of a clinical program Maine founded in 2003 at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.
Cleerly is currently conducting a large-scale, multi-year clinical trial to prove that its monitor can detect heart disease in people without symptoms of the disease more accurately than other routine, non-invasive methods such as measuring blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
If the company succeeds in gaining regulatory approval to screen large populations, it could be a major boon for the company, significantly expanding its market reach and revenues.
This enormous potential has attracted great interest from investors. On Wednesday, Clearly announced it had raised a $106 million Series C extension round led by Insight Partners and joined by Battery Ventures. The significant amount of capital comes just over two years after Clearly raised $223 million series c Led by T. Rowe Price and Fidelity.
An extension round is when a company sells another portion of itself at the price of the previous round. Although extension rounds are often a sign that a startup isn’t growing well (if it was, it would spark a new round at a higher valuation), Scott Barclay, managing director at Insight Partners, said Clearly is growing fast enough . By allowing Insight to join an earlier round, it is clearly gaining additional capital to fund future growth and multi-site clinical trials, he said.
Min told TechCrunch that while the company didn’t necessarily need additional capital, since Cleerly’s other backers were healthcare venture capital or cross-over companies, it was excited to add Insight Partners, one of the largest enterprise software investors, to the table. Its maximum.
Barkley is confident of Clearley’s potential. While the company awaits full FDA approval for general heart screening, its algorithms have already been approved to diagnose symptomatic patients, and in October, Medicare was approved Coverage of plaque analysis test. Plaque buildup is A common cause of heart attacks.
Until recently, patients who complained of chest pain may have been diagnosed with a stress test, which involves monitoring heart function during physical activity, or coronary angiography, a surgical procedure that measures blood flow to the heart using a catheter and X-rays.
Clearly claims that its AI-based analysis of a CT image is less stressful on the body than a stress test or angiogram, and by agreeing to pay for the test, health insurance companies and Medicare appear to be on the same page.
The company’s software has been commercially available for the past four years, and during that time, Clearly has achieved compound annual growth of more than 100%, Main said. He added that the company is poised to continue its growth trajectory now that most payers are familiar with its diagnostic method for the approximately 15 million people with heart problems each year.
Clearly is not without competition. Other companies working on AI-based heart panel image analysis include HeartFlow and Elucid, but since they all ultimately want to screen the entire population above a certain age, there is likely room for more than one winner in this market.
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