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Heart disease is still the number one cause of death in the United States, yet many people who suffer heart attacks are unaware they have underlying cardiovascular conditions. Cleerly, a cutting-edge cardiovascular imaging startup, is changing this by using artificial intelligence to detect early-stage coronary artery disease (CAD) through CT scans of the heart. This novel approach to heart disease detection is akin to mammograms for breast cancer and colonoscopies for colon cancer.
Founded in 2017 by cardiologist Dr. James Min, Cleerly is addressing a major gap in healthcare. The vast majority of people who will die from heart disease and heart attacks never have any symptoms,” Min explained. “At some point, we need to begin screening the world for heart disease.” The company emerged out of a clinical program that Min began at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine in 2003, focused on trying to catch signs of coronary artery disease earlier, even in people with no symptoms.
Cleerly’s vision is to deliver to the world a system with the ability to detect cardiac illness before symptoms occur, eliminating millions of heart attacks or myocardial infarctions,” he said. The firm recently launched a large, long-term clinical trial to ascertain whether its screening technology detects heart conditions in people in whom no symptoms exist but is far more sensitive compared to traditional methods like measurement of blood pressure and blood cholesterol.
Cleerly’s potential is enormous, and it has already attracted a lot of interest from investors. On Wednesday, the company announced that it had raised $106 million in a Series C extension round, bringing its total Series C funding to $329 million. Insight Partners led the round, with participation from Battery Ventures. This follow-up investment comes less than two years after Cleerly raised $223 million in its initial Series C round, which was led by T. Rowe Price and Fidelity.
While extension rounds are generally viewed as a negative indicator that a company is not growing fast enough to warrant a higher valuation, Cleerly’s story is an exception. According to Scott Barclay, managing director at Insight Partners, Cleerly’s trajectory of rapid growth, even after the extension round, tells the story of the company’s success. Cleerly allows Insight Partners to participate in the pricing of the previous round, thereby securing additional funding to support its growth and finance ongoing clinical trials across multiple sites.
The latest funding injection will be used to push deeper into the field of heart disease detection, expand the technology, and accelerate multi-site clinical trials. Already, Cleerly has enjoyed significant growth – compounded annual growth of over 100% since launching its software commercially four years ago – and is positioning itself for even greater success in the years ahead. The company has also received crucial regulatory approvals, such as its algorithm cleared by the FDA for diagnosing symptomatic patients and its plaque analysis test receiving coverage approval from Medicare in October.
The AI-powered analysis provided by Cleerly’s software is less invasive and less taxing on the body than traditional diagnostic tests, such as stress tests or angiograms. This non-invasive procedure has received acceptance from health insurers and Medicare, which gives a good indication that the company’s diagnostic value is well recognized. Cleerly’s technology will now be used to examine the CT scans of heart patients to identify plaque build-up, a leading cause of heart attacks, without placing a huge burden on patients who might otherwise have to undergo such invasive procedures.
The company’s software is commercially available to healthcare providers, and Cleerly has already established a huge presence in the healthcare market. Over 15 million Americans who present with heart problems each year will be potential candidates for Cleerly’s technology. Given the growth of the customer base and the increasing adoption of its AI-driven diagnostic platform, Cleerly has a great opportunity to become the go-to provider for heart disease screening across the U.S. and possibly around the world.
Although Cleerly competes with other AI-based heart disease imaging companies like HeartFlow and Elucid, the market is sufficiently large to allow for the presence of multiple players. These companies are all ultimately interested in screening the general population for heart disease, although they are targeting older adults, so there is certainly room for different players in this emerging space.
source: techcrunch
