September 4, 2019 – Novartis announced results from two new clinical trials evaluating improvement in heart structure ...

Shockwave Medical Inc. has received Breakthrough Device Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its Shockwave intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) system with the Shockwave C2 Coronary IVL Catheter. The device is currently the subject of an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) study called DISRUPT CAD III. The Shockwave C2 IVL Catheter is a proprietary tool designed to fracture problematic calcium using sonic pressure waves in order to facilitate stent delivery, deployment and optimal expansion, thereby improving blood flow to the heart muscle.

Philips will showcase its latest cardiac care innovations at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2019, Aug. 31–Sept. 4 in Paris, France. At the congress, Philips is showcasing Release 5.0 of its Epiq CVx cardiology platform for the first time in Europe. The platform includes automated applications for 2-D assessment of the heart, as well as robust 3-D right ventricle volume and ejection fraction measurements, making accurate exams faster and easier to conduct. Philips also announced that it is collaborating with digital health company LindaCare to combine the latter’s OnePulse cloud-based solution for the remote monitoring of patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) with the Philips IntelliSpace Cardiovascular informatics platform.

Use of the Internet of Things (IoT) is booming, with IHS Markit forecasting there will be 73 billion connected devices in use around the world by 2025. IoT technology has moved beyond speakers and smart fridges and is increasingly being utilized for critical applications across the healthcare industry like insulin delivery devices, connected inhalers and even cancer treatments.

A new 3-D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) computing technique developed by scientists in WMG at the University of Warwick focuses on hierarchical template matching (HTM) to diagnose cardiac disease without the use of gadolinium contrast. The technique is explored in an article in the journal Scientific Reports.