Ecopoint Medical

Echopoint Medical is a medical device company, spun out from University College London (UCL) in 2018, that is developing solutions for cardiovascular diagnostics. The company was founded by a multidisciplinary team of engineers and clinicians: Professor Adrien Desjardins, Dr. Richard Colchester, Professor Ioannis Papakonstantinou, and Dr. Malcolm Finlay, a Consultant Cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre. The founders' journey began with research at UCL, exploring how to integrate fibre optic sensors into minimally invasive devices to provide new sensing and imaging capabilities inside the human body.

The company's flagship product is the iKOr™ microcatheter system. This device uses a thin catheter with a 0.2mm wide fibre optic sensor that measures temperature and pressure to assess blood flow and detect obstructions in coronary arteries. It is specifically designed to address a diagnostic gap in conditions like Ischemia and No Obstructive Coronary Artery Disease (INOCA), which disproportionately affects women and involves problems with the heart's smallest blood vessels (microvasculature) that are difficult to see in standard angiograms. By providing a complete physiological profile of the heart's vessels in real-time, the iKOr system aims to give clinicians more precise data to guide treatment decisions, potentially reducing unnecessary stent procedures and improving outcomes for patients who could be treated with medication.

Echopoint Medical operates in the medical technology market, targeting interventional cardiologists and catheterization labs as its primary clients. The business model centers on the development and commercialization of its proprietary microcatheter, sensor technology, and data interpretation platform. The company has secured significant funding to advance its technology, including a Series A round of £4.2 million ($5.37M) in March 2024, bringing its total funding to approximately $9.74M. This funding, led by investors such as Parkwalk Advisors and the UCL Technology Fund, is supporting the iKOr system through the FDA approval process to enter the US market.

Keywords: cardiovascular diagnostics, fibre optic sensors, microcatheter, coronary artery disease, medical device, interventional cardiology, INOCA, microvascular dysfunction, physiological assessment, cardiac health, UCL spinout, iKOr system, blood flow measurement, pressure sensor, cath lab technology, angina, heart disease diagnosis, minimally invasive, medtech, health equity