CardioComm was started in the mid-1990s, focusing on a health issue which was underserviced by the healthcare solution providers at the time – real-time ECG monitoring of people outside of the hospital. The company developed devices which could record, monitor and detect life-threatening issues of patients before it was too late. CardioComm focused on careful development of the software side of such an innovation to develop solutions that could work with different manufacturers’ devices and therefore has not restricted the availability to one single hardware solution.
To record an ECG into software, CardioComm developed their Global ECG Management System (GEMS) which has been incorporated into systems used by several companies such as GE HealthCare and Philips Health. GEMS™ has a reputation of ease of use and high reliability and it was the only cloud-based remote device approved by the FAA to be used by the FAA examiners. The GEMS software is available in two versions that retain the device agnostic characteristic so important to hospitals, clinics and commercial ECG scanning services: the windows-based GEMS™ WIN for PC, Network or cloud-based use; and GEMS™ Flex which is a JavaScript-based solution and is therefore operating system agnostic and can run on any mobile platform. GEMS FLEX also uses AI development for automatic arrhythmia detection and reviewing. GEMS Flex enables CardioComm to look at any number of ECG signals, irrespective of the duration of the ECG and the number of leads recorded.
Market changes constantly influence ECG hardware and software providers. With Windows XP changes in 2014 and subsequent reimbursement code restructuring, the increase in demand for advanced solutions put developers under pressure resulting in many leaving the business altogether. CardioComm capitalized on this and planned a roadmap towards excellence, deciding to continue to build an offering of device agnostic solutions not just for those who were in the hospital bed but also for ambulatory monitoring for the people moving around their daily lives. To address this, CardioComm entered the consumer ECG monitoring market with the release of mobile, handheld ECG recording devices. The first was in 2012 with a device named the HeartCheck™ ECG PEN. CardioComm was the first company to be given medical device approval to sell an ECG recording and displaying technology directly to consumers in both the US and Canada marking CardioComm as a pioneer in this field. Most recently the company has added the FDA cleared HeartCheck CardiBeat and the Smartphone app GEMS™ Mobile for use with iOS and Android smartphones to the list of technology solutions. “Necessity is the mother of invention, and that was the key behind our success,” says Etienne Grima, CEO, CardioComm.
As part of an evolution from the reliance on 24-hour Holter ECG monitoring to a long term and continuous methods for remote cardiac monitoring, CardioComm has been gradually shifting its IP use to support cloud-based architectures. As a major part of this CardioComm launched an ECG reading service program called SMART Monitoring that allows anyone to be provided a reviewed ECG at any time and from anywhere.
Moreover, the consumer solutions benefit from the strengths of advanced GEMS™ software that are required for hospital use – technologies providing maintained privacy, malware protection, and the capacity to reduce unauthorized access to data.
With their previous work experience with different hospitals, CardioComm understands the gaps existing in the industry and has a keen awareness of what to focus on. When people did not understand the importance of self-testing, CardioComm brought in the first hand-held ECG device to the market. However, the company faced a major challenge when their software and hardware offering were used by new organizations as a bases for bringing to market Bluetooth connected devices. To overcome this, CardioComm started to seek out manufacturers of such devices who did not have software development strengths to develop a strategy of partnering for mutual benefit.
CardioComm is the only medical software developer to extend its reach into the consumer health and wellness market. Moreover, this year, CardioComm plans to launch more handheld devices which physicians can prescribe to their patients or that any consumer may purchase over-the-counter. While the company is extending its innovation, they are very particular about maintaining its best-in class-quality. The company is also planning to release different algorithms to help in identifying arrhythmia presence. There are also plans on incorporating different bio signals into their smartphone apps to expand the consumer’s ability to monitor their health independently and with acceptance from their physician. With this, CardioComm Solutions continues to build more medical device based platforms and to cater to the growing needs of the consumer and medical industries.
The Company’s impact on consumers can be seen from the feedback of their customers as stated by Heather D, from Canada, “I have had many unsuccessful holters trying to catch my arrhythmia, but since it occurs only every week or two, a three-day holter invariably misses it. I even had a seven-day holter that missed it. My solution has been to get a HeartCheck ECG device and use it whenever I have symptoms. Today I gave my doctor a pile of printouts of my HeartCheck rhythm strips, and it caught the various presentations of my arrhythmia perfectly. I was able to do measurements over the course of a couple of hours to demonstrate the response to treatment.”
CardioComm Solutions is a publically traded company (EKG-v) and is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
