adesso ventures, the venture capital arm of IT service provider adesso, is supporting the Berlin-based start-up in its endeavours. In addition to a financial investment, Noah Labs will gain access to adesso’s expertise and network in order to accelerate market penetration.
Early warning system for cardiovascular diseases
In today’s standard cardiovascular screening, patients measure their vital parameters using medical devices such as scales, blood pressure monitors or ECGs. They send this data to their heart specialist at regular intervals for evaluation. The problem: the manual evaluation of vital data, in particular, causes significant delays in screening, making it challenging for cardiologists to respond promptly and potentially resulting in unnecessary and costly hospital admissions. The Noah Labs Ark platform connects certified medical devices such as smartwatches, ECGs, or blood pressure monitors, transmitting patient data in real time to medical practices or hospitals. The analytics engine developed by Noah Labs analyses the data according to specific biomarkers in order to assess the patient’s state of health and make prognoses. For example, how should the increase in weight and body water be assessed in relation to blood pressure and heart rate? If a patient shows any abnormalities, the solution informs the relevant specialist so that measures can be taken at an early stage. This can be effective in reducing the number of hospital admissions.
An audible biomarker
Together with the German Heart Centre at the Charité hospital and the US Mayo Clinic, Noah Labs is currently conducting research into AI-supported voice-based diagnosis of heart disease. The approach: heart failure leads to water retention throughout the body, not least in the lungs, which can lead to pulmonary oedema in acute cases. Depending on the amount, these deposits affect the patient's voice. In extreme cases, this is already perceptible to the human ear. Artificial intelligence, however, could recognise nuances much earlier. The development and application of a non-invasive biomarker on this basis could significantly improve the accuracy of early diagnosis and monitoring of heart failure.
As part of three studies, the Analytics Engine from Noah Labs analyses voice samples from test subjects for hundreds of parameters in order to detect and evaluate even the smallest changes. The project partners will publish the initial study results shortly. The aim is to integrate the new biomarker and the AI model trained on it into Noah Labs Ark in the future, following successful testing.
