Ablacon raises $21.5 million for atrial fibrillation AI

Ablacon, which is developing an atrial fibrillation (AFib) mapping system, has closed a $21.5 million Series A funding round led by Ajax Health.

Ablacon, which is developing an atrial fibrillation (AFib) mapping system, has closed a $21.5 million Series A funding round led by Ajax Health. The company will use the proceeds to advance its technology pipeline and finance clinical trials. As part of the investment, Ajax Health CEO, Duke Rohlen is appointed Chairman and CEO of Ablacon. 

The company’s system uses artificial intelligence to analyse and visualise the flow of action potentials within the heart in order to identify sources and drivers of AFib, the most common cardiac arrhythmia worldwide. The map of the ‘Electrographic Flow’ can then guide physicians to provide more accurate therapy. 

“The idea to leverage techniques and algorithms from computer vision to analyse electric signals in the heart is ingenious. Ablacon combines concepts from both the medical world and machine intelligence in a way that I think is very promising,” said Daniel Cremers, Professor and Chair for Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition at the Technical University of Munich.

The company, which is based in Colorado, USA, obtained a CE Mark for its technology in 2018.

Ajax Health was founded in 2017 by Duke Rohlen, and has raised $300 million in three funding rounds from KKR, Aisling Capital, HealthQuest Capital, and others. Rohlen, who is an alum of Stanford and Harvard Business School, invested through Ajax in Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics (ACT), a medical device company that developed a catheter-based system for the treatment of patients with AFib. ACT was subsequently acquired by Medtronic in January 2019, and is now known as EPIX Therapeutics.