GE HealthCare and Medis Medical Imaging Announce Collaboration Focused on Non-Invasive Coronary Assessments to Help Advance Precision Care in Treatment of Coronary Artery Disease

Today, GE HealthCare (Nasdaq: GEHC), a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics and digital solutions innovator, and Medis Medical Imaging, a leading cardiac imaging software company, announced their collaboration aimed at helping advance precision care in the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD). Together, the two companies will work to further the development and commercialization of Medis Quantitative Flow Ratio (Medis QFR), a non-invasive approach to the assessment of coronary physiology, as part of GE HealthCare’s interventional cardiology portfolio built around the Allia Platform. The collaboration seeks to provide access to emerging technologies, like Medis QFR, while also reducing complexity in the cath lab to improve the operating environment for clinicians.

Within the complex umbrella of cardiovascular disease, CAD is a type of heart disease that develops when the coronary arteries narrow and the heart cannot deliver enough oxygen-rich blood to the heart. The impact of this narrowing can ultimately result in angina (chest pain), which has been shown to double the risk of major cardiovascular events,¹ as well as myocardial infarction (heart attack) or even death. In order to accurately diagnose suspected CAD, a significant percentage of patients can undergo invasive coronary angiography to help clinicians determine the severity of their disease. Traditionally, a clinician will then visually interpret an angiogram to determine whether a patient requires treatment, such as a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), as well as determine where, or which lesion, to treat to restore blood flow.

As part of GE HealthCare’s commitment to advancing precision care in interventional cardiology, the company’s collaboration with Medis Medical Imaging will bring Medis QFR to clinicians as an emerging, non-invasive, image-based diagnostic approach to the assessment of coronary artery physiology and the treatment of 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 reduction in myocardial infraction and ischemia-driven revascularization, when compared with standard angiography guidance alone.²