If you are at high risk of having a heart attack, stroke or cardiac death now or in the next year, wouldn’t you want to know? Thanks to one Seattle-area biotech startup, you can now find out with a simple blood test.
The result of five years of AI-enabled research and development, two tests developed by Kirkland, Washington-based Prevencio provide the first non-invasive heart-attack, stroke, and cardiac death risk diagnostic tools. The tests are compared with the company’s vast database of risk levels involving multiple proteins and fatty acids in complex combinations. This approach has proven substantially more accurate than the old-school treadmill stress test.
“We have no real competitors in the heart blood space,” says Prevencio president and CEO Rhonda Rhyne.
The blood tests, which Medicare began reimbursing in January, enable doctors to more easily diagnose heart troubles and quickly offer preventive treatments. With one American adult dying of a heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular death every 36 seconds, the life-saving potential is huge, Rhyne notes.
