Heart failure (HF) is a chronic condition, affecting 1 in 5 people aged over 65 worldwide, in which inefficient heart pumping causes body fluid retention and decreases a patient’s quality of life through dyspnea (shortness of breath), peripheral edema (leg swelling) and fatigue. The sudden worsening of symptoms, called Acute Decompensated Heart Failure (ADHF), is a life-threatening condition with 30% mortality within 12 weeks.

HF costs around €28B/year. There are 1 million new diagnoses of HF annually, and a 44% readmission rate within a year of the first acute event.  There is a need to increase awareness in HF, whose management is still highly ineffective. The transition from HF to ADHF takes weeks but a very early indicator exists, an increase in left ventricular filling pressure (LV). However this can only be measured invasively in a hospital. Current implantable monitoring methods have issues around efficacy, usability and portability.

Vectorious have developed V-LAP™, a sophisticated yet easy-to-use, scalable solution to measure LV pressure during daily life. V-LAP™ is composed of three elements: a miniaturized, battery-free pressure sensor implanted into the patient’s left heart chamber through a minimally invasive, catheter-based procedure: a wearable external device used for 1 minute per day to interrogate the implant; and a cloud platform that collects the patient’s hemodynamic data. If a rise in LV is detected, the clinician is alerted and the patient is contacted to change his drug therapy accordingly.

V-LAP™ will be able to predict at least 98% of ADHF events and reduce hospital readmission by at least 43%, saving around  €3.8B. The vision is to make HF management as simple and effective as managing glucose levels in diabetics.