Powerful Medical Receives €40 Million IPCEI Grant — read the full story

Powerful Medical
26. June 2025

Powerful Medical Awarded €1M EU-Funded Grant by Slovak Ministry of Economy to Advance AI-ECG Heart Attack Diagnostics

Image ilustrating the VAIA grant reception containing logos of important public institutions

We are pleased to announce that Powerful Medical has received over €985,000 in funding from the Slovak Ministry of Economy, as part of the EU-funded Recovery and Resilience Plan. The grant supports the continued development of our AI-based ECG interpretation technology, focused on improving early diagnosis and treatment of acute coronary syndromes (ACS).

“This support from the EU-funded Recovery and Resilience Plan is a strong statement that Slovakia is committed to building its role in Europe’s innovation ecosystem,” said Martin Herman, CEO and Co-Founder of Powerful Medical. “It enables us to continue developing world-class medical technology while anchoring our R&D, talent, and impact in Slovakia.”

The funded project, titled OMI AI ECG 2.0: Advancing Cardiac Care through AI-Enhanced ECG Interpretation, addresses a critical gap in the diagnosis of Occlusive Myocardial Infarction (OMI), a life-threatening condition frequently missed by conventional ECG-based methods.

Over 50 million patients present to emergency settings with chest pain every year. Yet traditional diagnostics based on STEMI criteria fail to identify nearly half of all myocardial infarctions, leading to delayed interventions and higher mortality. This project will advance two new AI-powered features—OMI vessel location and OMI stage detection—that will significantly improve the accuracy of OMI diagnosis and enable early, precise triage.

Our OMI AI ECG Model 2.0 will be trained in collaboration with leading clinical experts, and we expect that it will be able to interpret any standard 12-lead ECG with:

  • 93% diagnostic accuracy
  • 95% specificity
  • 84% sensitivity
  • And we estimate an average time-to-diagnosis reduction of 3.7 hours compared to the current practice

These improvements will enable identification of the affected coronary artery and differentiation between acute and reperfused OMI, allowing faster prioritization of PCI candidates and better allocation of limited healthcare resources.

The funding is provided under the Recovery and Resilience Plan’s “Science, Research and Innovation” priority, which promotes collaboration between the public and private sectors and supports Slovakia’s strategic role in advancing high-value European-developed technology.

This initiative will also accelerate the integration of these capabilities into PMcardio, our CE-certified clinical decision support platform that delivers real-time ECG interpretation at the point of care, supporting healthcare professionals in emergency, outpatient, and pre-hospital environments.

The Recovery and Resilience Plan is the European Union’s coordinated response to the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. In Slovakia, it drives investment across five key areas: education, digitalization, science and innovation, green transformation, and healthcare.

This grant strengthens Slovakia’s position as a center for advanced medical innovation, showcasing the country’s ability to develop and scale cutting-edge healthcare technology.

Powerful Medical

Powerful Medical leads one of the most important shifts in modern medicine by augmenting human-made clinical decisions with artificial intelligence. Our primary focus is on cardiovascular diseases, the world’s leading cause of death.
Powerful Medical leads one of the most important shifts in modern medicine by augmenting human-made clinical decisions with artificial intelligence. Our primary focus is on cardiovascular diseases, the world’s leading cause of death.
About PMcardio:

PMcardio is a CE-certified AI that reads ECGs and offers a complex assessment of 49 cardiac conditions. Clinically validated in 15+ studies and trusted by over 100,000 clinicians, it delivers rapid, expert‑level interpretations, empowering emergency physicians, GPs, nurses, paramedics, and cardiologists to act with confidence at the point of care. Available for Individuals and Organizations.

About Powerful Medical:

Established in 2017, Powerful Medical has embarked on a mission to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. We are a medical company backed by 28 world-class cardiologists and led by our expert Scientific Board with decades of experience in daily patient care, clinical research, and medical devices. The results of our research are implemented, developed, certified, and brought to market by our 50+ strong interdisciplinary team of physicians, data scientists, AI experts, software engineers, regulatory specialists, and commercial teams.

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