Echoopint Medical Secures £2.8M Seed Funding to Advance Ultrasound Signal Conversion Platform and Files IPO Prospectus

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that on November 8, 2019, local time, Echoopint Medical (Echoopint), a medical technology company headquartered in London, UK, announced the completion of a £2.8 million seed funding round. The financing came from Parkwalk and the UCL Technology Fund, as well as two grants provided by Innovate UK.

Echoopint, founded in November 2018 and led by Executive Chairman Antony Odell, is a medical technology company spun out of the UCLA Anderson School of Management (UCLA), dedicated to transforming the precision diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. The company has developed an optical sensing technology to facilitate precise diagnosis and treatment for patients with heart disease. The funds from this financing round will be used to further develop Echoopint’s fiber-optic sensors on chip and its technology platform that converts ultrasonic signals into meaningful metrics.

Coronary heart disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. In the United Kingdom alone, more than 7 million people have been diagnosed with coronary heart disease. This condition causes narrowing of the arteries, often necessitating stent implantation for treatment; however, this therapeutic approach is both risky and costly.

Currently, there is a lack of effective methods to determine whether patients require stent placement. Fuel-based imaging technologies often create extensive "gray zones," failing to provide physicians with precise diagnostic and therapeutic support, which results in many patients undergoing unnecessary invasive procedures.

Echopoint has developed a low-cost microcatheter that uses fiber-optic sensors to accurately measure patients’ blood pressure and blood flow, helping clinicians precisely assess whether invasive stent procedures are necessary, thereby significantly reducing the use of stent implants in coronary artery disease interventions.

Echopoint’s core iKOR platform integrates cutting-edge interdisciplinary engineering technologies to create a new generation of fiber-optic sensors. Leveraging its proprietary microstructures and nanomaterials, iKOR enables high-fidelity measurements of pressure, temperature, and flow within the human body, as well as optical ultrasound imaging and real-time tracking of medical devices. Fabricated from low-cost telecommunications-grade optical fiber, iKOR sensors can be readily incorporated into minimally invasive cardiovascular devices and are fully compatible with existing clinical workflows.

Professor Adrien Desjardins, Professor of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at UCL, stated: “Coronary heart disease is a major health burden worldwide, yet clinicians often base stent implantation decisions on imprecise assessments. Our technology addresses the current ‘gray area’ in determining whether patients truly require stenting. By leveraging advanced optical sensing technology, we aim to significantly improve the accuracy of coronary heart disease treatment, reduce healthcare costs, and prevent unnecessary surgical interventions in patients who can be effectively managed with medication.”

Parkwalk, founded in 2009 and headquartered in London, UK, is an investment management company that focuses on investing in UK-based technology companies with independent intellectual property rights and operational autonomy, most of which are spin-offs from British universities.

UCL Technology Fund, headquartered in London, UK, is dedicated to investing in start-ups with independent intellectual property rights incubated by UCL’s research base, with a particular focus on the physical and life sciences.

Innovate UK, established in 2007 and headquartered in Wiltshire, United Kingdom, is a non-profit organization that provides funding services to innovative companies to support technological innovation.

(Compiled by He Li)