A Prague startup has banked a bet that a chest strap worn through an ordinary day can surface heart rhythm problems that come and go. Kardi Ai closed a 5.3 million euro Series A led by Callisto Health, the German healthtech investor.
Seed Starter, the vehicle run by Ceska sporitelna and Slovenska sporitelna, joined alongside BrightCap Ventures, Purple Ventures, DEPO Ventures and Garage Angels.
Wearable ECG built for everyday life
The hardware is a fitness chest strap fitted with an ECG sensor, shipped with a phone app and software that reads the traces. Several days of ordinary wear reveal far more of the heart’s behavior than the window a Holter monitor captures, giving intermittent events a better chance of appearing.
Physicians keep the judgment. Kardi Ai reports findings and backs clinical decisions, and it does not issue diagnoses.
Adoption at home now reaches most of the country’s hospital network and dozens of employer benefit schemes, putting the technology on thousands of people. A slice of those users, about a quarter, turned up possible arrhythmias, and more than 500 flagged results were filed as critical.
Prediction is the next target
Neighbours came next, led by Slovakia, where more than 20 physicians, mainly cardiologists, now work with the system. Poland, Romania and Bulgaria are live too, Germany follows once pilots wrap up, approvals are in hand for India and the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore’s device review nears completion.
The capital funds that roll-out and a harder goal: models reading across several ECG measurements to estimate arrhythmia risk ahead of an event. Validation and clearance stand between those models and practice.
For co-founder and chief executive Vlastimil Hrabal, the prize is scale, since the company’s present and planned markets hold close to two billion residents.
