What a year 2022 has been. For us at Powerful Medical, 2022 was a year of maturing and growth. We went through many changes, both as a business, as well as a team.
As we write these lines, we believe that this year has brought us closer to fulfilling our mission of revolutionising cardiovascular care with AI and saving the lives of cardiac patients.
So, what have we achieved in 2022? We welcome you to read through the 10 highlights of Powerful Medical that defined this year for us.
#1. Became a fully certified medical device
Our team worked tirelessly for the past year to get our medical platform PMcardio certified by TÜV SÜD, one of the world’s most trusted product certification companies. Becoming a TÜV certified device means our product meets the highest industry standards and ensures the highest level of performance and safety.
We also became an ISO 13485 certified medical device manufacturer for AI-powered diagnostics and treatment and successfully certified PMcardio as a Class IIb Medical Device under the EU Medical Device Regulation 745/2017 (MDR).
Today, we are proud to say that PMcardio is the world’s first CE-certified AI-powered platform for diagnosing and treating cardiovascular diseases.
#2. Raised €6.2 million in seed funding
In September, we shared the exciting news of raising €6.2 million in our seed funding round. We thank our investors – Venture To Future Fund (VFF), CB ESPRI Impact One, bpd partners, and several angel investors for putting their faith in us.
Their funds will not only help us further our company vision but also hire more talent and set us on a journey to strengthen our market potential, expand globally, and monetise our core product, PMcardio.
#3. Improved PMcardio’s diagnostic performance
Our AI team worked around the clock over the past year, improving not only the diagnostic performance of our Cardio AI Cloud but also notably speeding up our algorithms.
We are proud to share that PMcardio can now aid medical professionals in detecting 15 more diagnoses.
We expanded our diagnoses from 23 to 38 over the course of this year. These include various arrhythmias and conduction system abnormalities, such as the Long QT Syndrome – a potentially life-threatening condition that is often drug-induced and asymptomatic.
Our diagnostic algorithms have also become much more precise. PMcardio 2.6 has seen a reduction in diagnostic error by 67% compared to PMcardio 2.4.
Speed matters much to physicians, and so PMcardio 2.6 also got notably faster – the overall average time to diagnosis went down from 5 to 2.5 seconds – marking a 50% reduction.
#4. Got PMcardio ready for launch
The year of 2022 was all about preparing our medical assistant PMcardio for an official launch. Many long days and countless hours were put into perfecting the 2.6 version of PMcardio.
After submitting all the technical documentation to the certification bodies in October, we are finishing up the preparations to deliver the app to the app stores in early 2023. Stay tuned!
#5. Launched our brand new website
In September, our newly formed marketing team started to work on our new website, which you can discover here.
The goal of the new web was to express our company vision better and communicate PMcardio in a way that aligns with our future plans.
In the words of our chief brand designer, Adriana Danekova:
“The new web features fresh, innovative visuality that reflects the values of our brand. The main elements combine the modern, technology-driven spirit of our brand with the visual clarity characteristic of the medical industry.”
#6. Moved to our new beautiful office
As a bigger team, we also needed a bigger space where we could do our best work. In October, we moved to a new, almost 600-square-meter office on the 20th floor with a magnificent view of the Bratislava skyline.
This is a great milestone for us as before, we felt to be a classic “garage” startup, working from a small house in a suburb. Moving to our new office marks the beginning of a new chapter – becoming a more mature and experienced company.
To share this joy with our investors, partners and friends, we held an event in November where we celebrated the reveal of the new space as well as our C-suite shared company updates.
#7. Our team grew bigger by 22 new colleagues
Our goals would not have been possible to reach without the right team of people. In the year 2022, we symbolically hired 22 amazing new people. We also filled in some crucial roles such as Financial Lead, Front End Lead, Customer Success Manager and Brand Designer.
Our team now consists of 50+ employees, including physicians, data scientists, AI experts, software engineers, marketing professionals, and other world-class professionals at the top of their respective fields.
#8. Gained clinical weight, validation and recognition
Gathering clinical evidence plays a crucial role in the success of startups and medical devices in the digital health sector. To validate the claims of PMcardio – its added value in primary care and to demonstrate our comprehensive understanding of clinical robustness across the industry, we have successfully performed our own multi-centric randomised controlled clinical trial with 60 participating primary care practices. At this stage, we have successfully completed patient enrolment for our clinical trial, which proved to be the largest randomised control trial focused on using AI in cardiology in Europe.
To enhance the future potential of PMcardio, we kicked off the research on future modules of our platform and published our first clinical study in the ESC Heart Failure Journal, focused on assessing all-cause mortality in patients hospitalised with heart failure. Constantly driving the force of innovation in medical technology, we understand the importance of meaningful partnerships. Hence we are proud to share that we expanded our network of clinical research partners, including the University Medical Center Utrecht, Imperial College London, and the University of Turin.
#9. Improved our treatment recommendations engine
Physicians need to be familiar and up-to-date with thousands of pages worth of medical practice guidelines. There is a separate guideline for every cardiovascular diagnosis and the guidelines change every two or three years. This makes it challenging for practitioners to keep up.
The newest version of PMcardio provides precise treatment recommendations that are based on the latest medical practice guidelines – all readily available within the app.
For each diagnosis we support, there is an intricate recommendation decision tree. After digitising an ECG, a practitioner simply needs to enter basic patient parameters such as age, gender, symptoms and answer some anamnestic questions. Our treatment recommendation engine will suggest specific treatment steps and help physicians make immediate medical decisions.
#10. Had the chance to present and speak at top-notch events
Throughout 2022, we got the chance to be part of multiple high-profile events around the world.
Just to name a few, our Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder Robert Herman presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona for the 4th year in a row.
In October, we had the chance to present our company and PMcardio at the Reflect Festival in Limassol, Cyprus. We were pleased to receive phenomenal feedback from the tech and business community on our product, company, and mission to modernise healthcare and save the lives of cardiovascular patients through the use of artificial intelligence.
Our Head of Data, Michal Martonak, presented at the Human Centric Artificial Intelligence Conference organised by the European Commission, where he talked about how we tackle ethical aspects we face throughout the AI algorithm development process from a data perspective.
