Devices & Diagnostics

CardioInsight signs Japanese distributor, raises more cash

CardioInsight Technologies has secured a Japanese distribution partner for its heart-mapping technology, and added about $4 million in investment funding that it hadn't previously disclosed.

CardioInsight Technologies has secured a Japanese distribution partner for its heart-mapping technology, and added about $4 million in investment funding that it hadn’t previously disclosed.

The company raised a total of $10 million last year, according to a statement from CardioInsight. In February, CardioInsight reported that it had closed a $6 million Series B round.

The newly disclosed funding comes in part from a new investor, Tokyo-based medical device distributor DVx, which will also serve as CardioInsight’s distributor in Japan. Japan is the world’s third-largest cardiovascular market, according to the statement.

About $1 million of the new funding comes from a Third Frontier grant from the state of Ohio, CardioInsight CEO Steve Arless said.

CardioInsight plans to launch its electrocardiographic mapping system in Europe in June 2011 and in the U.S. later in the year. The Japanese launch won’t come until at least 2012, Arless said.

Before the company can launch any of the products, though, it’ll need clearance from various countries’ regulatory agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S.  For FDA clearance, the company will submit a 510(k) application, Arless said, but he wouldn’t specify when.

Arless said the company plans a hiring spree of sorts this year in anticipation of commercializing its technology, though he wouldn’t say how many people CardioInsight is targeting to hire. The company now has 20 to 25 employees, most of whom perform clinical and research and development work. CardioInsight is looking to hire primarily sales and marketing and operations workers this year, Arless said.

CardioInsight’s electrocardiographic mapping technology gathers electrical information about the heart from an electrode “vest” placed on a patient’s body and combines that information with images from a CT scan to produce 3-D maps of the electrical activity of the heart. Unlike conventional methods, CardioInsight’s technology is noninvasive and provides beat-by-beat, whole-heart mapping.

Once commercialized, the technology — the sensor array and software to collect, analyze and combine its data with the CT image — could help diagnose and treat electrical abnormalities of the heart, such as those associated with arrhythmia and heart failure.

CardioInsight has raised a total of about $12 million since it was founded in 2006, Arless said. He joined the company about two years ago.

The majority of the company’s funding has come from Draper Triangle, the Pittsburgh office of Midwestern venture capital fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Other investors include JumpStart Inc., the nonprofit venture development organization in Cleveland, and the technology transfer office of Case Western Reserve University.

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