GE HealthCare last week announced a new collaboration with Medis Medical Imaging, a cardiac imaging software company. The partners hope to advance precision care in diagnosing and treating coronary artery disease (CAD).
The companies will work together to further develop and commercialize the Medis Quantitative Flow Ratio (Medis QFR), a non-invasive way to assess coronary physiology, as part of GE HealthCare's interventional cardiology portfolio built around the Allia Platform.
CAD is a form of heart disease that develops when the coronary arteries narrow and the heart cannot deliver enough oxygen-rich blood to the heart. The narrowing can cause angina (chest pain), which can double the risk of major cardiovascular events,[1] myocardial infarction (heart attack) and death.
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To accurately diagnose CAD, patients often undergo invasive coronary angiography to help clinicians determine the severity of their disease. A clinician will then visually interpret an angiogram to determine whether a patient requires treatment, such as a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and determine where or which lesion to treat to restore blood flow.
GE HealthCare's collaboration with Medis Medical will bring Medis QFR to clinicians as an emerging, non-invasive, image-based diagnostic approach to assessing coronary artery physiology and treating CAD.
The benefits of QFR guidance are supported in a recent study that showed that a QFR-guided strategy of lesion selection for PCI improved two-year clinical outcomes, including a reduction in myocardial infarction and ischemia-driven revascularization compared to standard angiography guidance alone.[2]
Medis Medical Imaging has been developing post-processing software for quantifying cardiovascular images for 35 years. The company's QFR is a proprietary solution that delivers image-based physiology of coronary obstructions based on angiography imaging analysis alone.
Interventional cardiologists can adopt the solution into their clinical workflow to help them effectively and efficiently determine if a PCI is required to treat the patient or if treatment should be deferred for ongoing monitoring or other alternative treatment options. If treatment is needed, Medis' QFR technology can help clinicians select the ultimate lesion(s) for treatment and create the right treatment plan for a balloon or stent-based PCI procedure while also helping the clinician evaluate the efficacy of that treatment. The analysis can be performed in real time while the patient is on the table, and results are displayed on the large display monitor in the cath lab.
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- World Health Federation, Use Heart to Act on Angina
- 2-Year Outcomes of Angiographic Quantitative Flow Ratio-Guided Coronary Interventions, Journal of the American College of Cardiology
