STIMULUS · Speckle Technology and Digital Biomarkers of Microvascular Function for Monitoring Cardiovascular Diseases

Over 60 million people in the EU live with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), at an annual economic cost of +210B€. Despite being largely preventable, CVDs cause more than 18.5 million deaths every year. To combat this, we develop new instruments for assessing adverse changes in microcirculatory status linked to hypertension, chronic kidney disease (CKD) and heart failure (HF), leading to earlier detection of CVDs. The instruments are developed and validated in clinical trials. We integrate two state-of-the-art technologies leading to a novel innovation, 3D speckle tissue monitoring. In addition, we demonstrate a direct use-case for unobtrusive monitoring in a smart-toilet application. Global remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems market is expected to surpass 5 B$ by 2030 with CAGR of 20%. The demand for the RPM systems is rapidly growing among the old age population. Monitoring innovations targeting this group can reduce hospitalization and costly chronic conditions. Furthermore, the technology is closely linked to wearable remote monitoring. The global wearable technology market is expected to grow to 392 B$ by 2030 with CAGR of 13.9%. The opportunity is significant as the number of wearable users currently exceeds 1 billion globally and the developed technology targets similar markets. We currently estimate that with the new instrument and digital biomarkers we can reduce the healthcare burden by over 30% by preventing CVDs. Additionally, we are aiming to identify citizens at risk of developing hypertension, CKD and/or HF and by timely intervention, we expect to reduce indirect healthcare costs by over 20%. In conclusion, our solution will integrate two existing state-of-the-art methods and provide clearly new monitoring techniques to assess the microcirculatory status, revealing early signs of CVDs. We will provide an innovative solution to emerging digital unobtrusive health markets while helping the over 60 million Europeans suffering from CVDs.