Las Vegas startup bets AI can transform heart disease detection

Stephen Randall didn’t plan on becoming a case study for Medaica, his Las Vegas-based company that has created artificial intelligence-assisted at-home heart exams.

But that’s what happened last year after the serial entrepreneur with a family history of heart disease — and two stents to show for it — returned home from a routine six-month checkup with his cardiologist.

Randall’s appointment included an EKG and clean bill of health before he tested his heart himself using an early version of Medaica’s FDA-approved device.

The AI-assisted exam detected abnormal heart sounds and a murmur, which led to follow-up testing that confirmed previously undiagnosed early valve disease.

“The AI detected something my cardiologist and EKG didn’t,” he said. “That’s not unusual. I just didn’t think I would be the poster child for the business.”

When he told his ex-cardiologist — Randall jokes that he has since changed physicians — he had a murmur, the doctor told him not to worry because it was unlikely to develop into anything serious for about five years.

“I don’t want to be walking around with a ticking time bomb,” Randall said. “I’d rather know how to defuse it.”

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association. Medaica’s remote exam is designed to detect early onset of heart disease.

“Our mission is to reduce the number of undiagnosed heart disease patients. Eighty percent is preventable,” Randall said. “It’s still a business. We want to make money. But we want to save lives as well.”

The Medaica platform combines a digital stethoscope, telehealth technology and AI-assisted clinical support that allows health care providers to listen to heart and lung sounds remotely while maintaining clinical-quality audio.

The company’s patented stethoscope contains two microphones — one to listen to the heart and one for a doctor to speak to a patient. The technology also enables a doctor to instruct a patient where to place the 6-inch stethoscope by moving a virtual cursor on their screen.

“Just with a simple test, we can do this remotely over telehealth, you can actually record the heart sounds and have AI extract the features of the heart sounds and say they’re normal or abnormal,” said Randall, who was born and raised in London and has lived in Las Vegas for seven years.

The company focuses on what are known as acoustic biomarkers, or medically significant sounds produced by the heart and lungs, to determine, in part, whether valves are opening and closing properly or pumping properly.

“It’s a bit like listening to an engine,” Randall said. “You can tell if it’s firing properly.”

On a mission

Randall said he and co-founder Pablo Rivas invested $2 million of their own money to de-risk the technology and get FDA clearance. StartUpNV, the state’s business accelerator and incubator, also recently invested in Medaica through its pre-seed FundNV.

“Our goal is to get them at least a million dollars, and we think we can get there,” StartUpNV co-founder Jeff Saling said. “We like it because, unlike a lot of medical devices, it’s done. They’ve made it. They got it approved. It’s working.

“They don’t have distribution yet. That’s what makes it investable. They’re going to use the investment money to get it out into the market.”

The company plans to launch its direct-to-consumer home heart exam kit in the coming weeks for $199 at Medaica.com.

“We send you the device and you book an exam with one of our technicians, then over telehealth we’ll listen to your heart,” Randall said. “That will then get analyzed by AI and you’ll get sent a report. It’s a bit like a blood panel.

“Eventually, you’ll be able to use the device on your own with an iPhone app and it will say normal or abnormal.”

After the first direct-to-consumer phase, which Randall notes is ideal for 50 million Americans that live more than an hour away from a doctor, Medaica hopes to start serving the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Saling said that plan was a big selling point for investors.

“The fact that they wanted to go to the VA, because the VA has a big goal to do full exams on all the people they have to serve, this is a real important thing to be able to do remotely, and do it well,” he said. “They’ve already done the work to get it on the formulary for the VA. We thought that was a smart business plan.

“On top of all the financial upside we’re hoping for as investors, the mission that they’re on, they’re not just saying happy talk about saving people’s lives. They mean it. They genuinely want to be able to look at themselves in the mirror in three or four years, or 10 years from now after this thing has been in the market for a while, and know that they’ve put something good into the world that’s helping people. And that’s nice.”