How AI is detecting heart attack risk

• A “heart-attack free world” is Cleerly founder and CEO James Min’s goal.
• Nearly half of adults in the U.S., more than 121 million, have some type of cardiovascular disease. Over 650,000 die from heart disease every year.
• The startup has raised $279 million from investors including Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Novartis and Peter Thiel.

Heart disease is the nation’s No. 1 killer, reaching into all communities across income, race, gender and geography. It takes a disproportionate toll on minority populations and women, but one challenge that many patients at risk of a heart attack share: inability to identify the risk before it is too late. More than half of individuals experiencing acute myocardial infarction have no symptoms that might serve as early warning signs.

Cardiologist James Min, former professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at New York-Presbyterian, founded Cleerly to find a better way to assess heart health, by applying AI to the problem, cutting down on the time it takes to flag issues and ultimately reach his goal of a “heart-attack free” world.

His startup’s quantitative comparison tool tracks patient disease by the amount and type of atherosclerosis (plaque) rather than indirect surrogates, including risk factors, symptoms, stenosis (narrowing of the aortic valve), and ischemia (blood flow restriction).

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