Powerful Medical Awarded €1M EU-Funded Grant by Slovak Ministry of Economy to Advance AI-ECG Heart Attack Diagnostics
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).
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.
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About PMcardio
PMcardio is a CE-marked Class IIb AI medical device that interprets any 12-lead ECG — from a photo or a digital file — in seconds. It detects 50+ ECG findings, including occlusion myocardial infarction (OMI) — the acute coronary occlusions that conventional STEMI criteria miss in over half of cases. Its Queen of Hearts™ OMI model holds FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, and PMcardio is already used by 100,000+ clinicians who have analyzed more than 2.5 million ECGs.
About Powerful Medical
Powerful Medical is a medical-technology company using artificial intelligence to transform how cardiovascular disease — the world’s leading cause of death — is diagnosed. Founded in 2017, it built PMcardio, the world’s first AI medical device to detect acute coronary occlusion (OMI) from an ECG. Its research is published in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health and validated across 25+ clinical studies, and its Queen of Hearts™ model earned FDA Breakthrough Device Designation. To date, PMcardio has supported the detection of 120,000+ heart attacks across 150+ hospital deployments worldwide.
